|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
There are a number of reasons why an individual or a family finds themselves struggling with poverty. And with the poverty rate in New Bedford higher than the national average, organizations such as People Acting in Community Endeavors (PACE) are crucial to supporting those who are the least fortunate among us. And according to PACE Executive Director Pam Kuechler, when people facing economic challenges receive the necessary support, the results benefit all of us.
Formed in 1982, PACE has grown to meet the expanding needs of the region and today has 11 different programs, including Fuel Assistance, housing, job training, Head Start, and childcare subsidies to assist working parents. Located at 166 William St. in downtown New Bedford, the organization is federally funded, much of which is funneled through the state. PACE serves more than 30,000 people each year.
But all of this could change dramatically. The most recent federal budget proposed by President Donald Trump aims to cut approximately half of the funding for PACE’s programs, threatening its very existence.
Despite its dynamic outreach, these are tenuous times for PACE and the other regional organizations they partner with. Additional PACE programs include a community food center, the Health Access program that helps people get health insurance, a tax preparation program that served 350 people this year, and the Department of Public Health’s lead prevention program which provides support and services to families with children who have been diagnosed with high lead levels.
Today PACE has a staff of 178 and 50 volunteers. It describes its mission as “delivering innovative and effective services and programs to members of the Greater New Bedford Community in their pursuit of brighter futures.”
Kuechler (pronounced “keech-ler”) has devoted her entire professional career to helping others, and has been the executive director at PACE since 2018. Her previous work includes a stint with the Key Program, where she helped at-risk youth in Fall River. That was followed by more work with at-risk youth in the Newport school system with the Stopover Services organization. In 1995, she joined PACE to run the Family Center at the Hayden-McFadden School in New Bedford. Five years later she became the program director at PACE’s Childcare Works program, which provides family support programs and subsidies for families in the area. In 2012, she became the executive director of the Massachusetts Head Start Association, an organization that supports the Head Start programs throughout the state. Head Start provides early education, health, and social services to low-income children and families, with the aim of creating school-ready children.
Born and raised in Fairhaven, Kuechler graduated from Fairhaven High School before earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology, with minors in sociology and justice studies, from the University of New Hampshire. Today she lives in Fairhaven with her husband Doug, her mother Peggy, her son Alex and her dogs Sam and Jasmine. Her daughter Alison lives in Norwood. A lover of the outdoors and open-air recreation, Kuechler is also an avid reader and spends as much time in New Hampshire as she can.
In an interview with The Light, Kuechler talked about the contributions of PACE and its effects on the community, partnering with other local organizations, what success looks like for the organization, how programs such as PACE are effective, the potential effects of President Trump’s budget proposal, and the future of PACE.
New Bedford Light: Why is there a need for PACE?
Pam Kuechler: Sixty years ago, Community Action agencies were created as a program of President Johnson’s “War On Poverty.” As one of the 1,000 Community Action agencies across the country, PACE, and its predecessor ONBOARD, was created to provide support for folks living in poverty in ways that would empower them to be able to move towards sustainable self-sufficiency goals within their own families and their own individual situations.
The conditions of poverty haven’t changed, but the amount of poverty over time has changed. New Bedford has a higher poverty rate, at 20%, than our national average of 12.4%, so the challenges still exist in our community. Even while we are seeing economic changes locally, there are still a number of people in our community that have not been able to avail themselves of the opportunities available. We have found over time there’s always folks who run up against something that could change their situations quickly, and that was never more obvious than when we went through COVID and the number of people that were served through our Food Center and through Fuel Assistance, as well as the many other programs we offer. So the need for the agency is comprehensive because we provide comprehensive opportunities to help.
NBL: What is the overall effect that PACE has on the community?
PK: We provide a space for people to receive help in a dignified way. And really to try to provide that space so folks can feel that they can receive assistance if they need it. We try to approach every aspect of our work in that manner where we believe that every person deserves an opportunity. We believe that every person deserves to be treated with respect. And we believe that every person deserves to have the tools to help them move beyond any challenges that they’re facing.
Our community becomes stronger if the people who live in it become stronger, and we’re really here to try to provide opportunities for folks to strengthen themselves, their situations, their families, their living situations, all of the above.
NBL: Does helping the less fortunate help all of us? And if so how?
PK: I do feel that helping the less fortunate benefits all of us because when folks who are struggling receive assistance that helps to lessen their struggle, our community is stronger for that. It’s multi-faceted. Many of the people who came through our programs who are now volunteers often will say to us, “We received help at one point and we want to give back.”
And because of the nature of our work, we provide opportunities for people to do that. So there’s a multi-pronged impact. If children receive opportunities early on that really support their development then their chances for long-term success improve exponentially. And that’s what things like our Head Start program provides. We also provide the early childhood subsidies to all of the other high-quality childhood programming that we have in this community. The vouchers that families receive so their children can go to high-quality settings to set them up to be really successful once they hit public school.
The long-term impact of helping people move out of situations where they’re struggling is not something that has been able to be quantified well. I really think that when members of our community are succeeding, then our communities are stronger for that.
NBL: Why has PACE expanded its programming and its reach?
PK: Our expansion of the work that we do hasn’t really happened by mistake. Every three years we are required to do a community needs assessment that’s really, really comprehensive. We ask folks who are receiving our services, we talk to key stakeholders across the community, we hold public forums, we have a needs assessment that we put out there. We ask folks to provide their feedback, and we try to engage the community as much as possible to really try to identify the top needs in our community.
Once that data is compiled, we’ll take a look at the things we’re offering already, where we maybe need to make adjustments and how we can do that. And in the areas where we don’t actually fit right in the box or provide those services we look at where we have partnerships with agencies and other people within the community that offer certain things that we can help to strengthen their work so that they can meet additional needs identified.
So much of our work has been born of those identified areas. As you might imagine, the top needs that we are seeing over the last few years from the needs assessments have been housing, food insecurity, childcare and mental health issues. We try to take a look at what particular programmatic opportunities, or even partnerships with other agencies, to see if it’s a fit for us, and can we maybe be a value add to the work being done in that area. We also consider if we could help to pull the community together to maybe meet that need.
As a result, you see our expansion in our food programming, there’s been an expansion in our Housing Opportunity Center, and our housing services to provide people with support to try to find housing or to stay in their housing to prevent homelessness. You see expansion in our Head Start programming in that we shifted and increased the number of infants to toddlers that are served because we see that demand in our community. Our childcare voucher program has expanded in part because of the way it’s being done across the state. But also, because the state has increased the number of vouchers that are available to us down here from past years. We have even expanded our Workforce Development options based on the needs of the wind industry and demand for workers.
We try to take a look at opportunities that come up and see how it matches with what our mission is and what our strategic plan is, and if it fits into what we’re doing then we take a look at who we partner with to do some of these things with. Which things should we be doing on our own? Or how do we support our partners that are doing this work to boost the work that they are doing?
NBL: How long, on average, does a person receive assistance from PACE?
PK: We don’t typically track that because the majority of our services are based on income, so it varies from person to person. People could be participating in multiple services for a variety of amounts of time. We have people who come to our Food Center once and we have children in Head Start which is a time-limited program, so children are eligible to be in it from birth up until going into kindergarten. Same thing with our childcare subsidies for the length of time children are eligible to be in childcare for as long as the family’s income allows them to be eligible for the subsidies. It really, really varies. It’s hard to pinpoint a time frame.
We will have folks that use our services for a period of time we don’t see for several years and they may come back. A perfect example is folks who retire and go on a fixed income and then run into a situation where their house is sold that they’re renting from and a new owner makes it impossible for them to stay. They hike the rent up so high. So they may come back to our Housing Opportunity Center. They may not have received any support from PACE for many, many years but they need help finding a new place to live. So the amount of time people participate really varies.
NBL: You’ve devoted your entire professional career to helping the less fortunate. Can you say that these programs have an impact? Are they benefitting the people who need them?
PK: Without a doubt. Really it runs the gamut — everything from children who have gone through Head Start or have gone through some of our family support programs who have gone on to do incredible things in their own lifespan of school, careers and going on to college and doing some really remarkable things; to folks getting assistance with fuel and making a huge difference in their ability to be able to remain housed, which keeps them from becoming homeless. There are so many reasons why programs like this are important to help give people the opportunity to make their resources stretch as far as they can so that they can successfully meet their basic needs and continue on a path whereby they are meeting their goals.
Giving people workplace development opportunities to be able to go into new employment opportunities or advance to careers. Our Clemente Course, three or four years ago, a person who went through that free college program was the valedictorian of Bristol Community College.
There are numerous things to point to that have really made a difference. We’ve had people come back as volunteers who give back to our community. When they come in to apply they say, “Many years ago my family got help through PACE and I just want to give back.”
NBL: How might PACE be affected by the president’s proposed budget cuts?
PK: So short-term, we run a Head Start program which, if anyone’s seen the news lately, was at risk of not making it into the president’s budget. Since then that has changed a little bit. We also run the Community Services Block Grant, which is our base funding, and the Fuel Assistance program, both of which in the president’s skinny budget that just came out were zeroed out, eliminated. So we are concerned about the impact of cuts like that, of programs like those being gone, the impact both on the people that we serve as well as economically. A program like Fuel Assistance benefits the clients that we’re serving and vendors that receive the funds to help pay for fuel. Many of our clients heat with oil and those oil vendors benefit from the fact that their clients are being assisted to pay their bills.
That’s just one example. Our food bank is supported by the CSBG funds that are right now proposed to be zeroed out. And again, it’s the president’s budget. Congress still has to put its budget together and move it through the system. The concern is that, because of the way that Congress is made up right now, they will follow in line with the president’s proposals. It’s really our job to make people understand the impact could really be vast if things move forward and CSBG and Fuel Assistance are not funded.
NBL: What would the real-life consequences be if this budget is passed?
PK: If the president’s budget cuts take place and all things remain as proposed, we would lose all the funding for our Fuel Assistance program. We have 17,800 utility payments that would not be made. We’re talking about slightly over 10,000 households – not people, just households that would not be able to heat their homes throughout the entire course of the winter. You could extrapolate that. Say each house has more than one person in it. Of these households, over 50 percent of these folks are elderly. So folks living on a fixed income who have worked their whole lives, they receive this benefit, it helps them get through the difficult winter, and that opportunity would be gone.
If our Community Services Block Grant were not funded it would very much impact our Food Center, which currently serves over 10,000 people in a year. Food insecurity is a real problem in our area and it would vastly reduce our capacity to be able to have access to food, to be able to address food insecurity as well as reduce our ability to remain open on any kind of regular basis to give people access.
… In theory, if the Head Start program were not to be funded, it would mean that about 204 children would not get the high quality services and their families would not get the wrap-around services and support they receive as part of the Head Start program.
NBL: Could you talk more about how you complement or work with other organizations in the area?
PK: We don’t operate in a vacuum. Every single aspect of the work we do is done in partnership with other folks who do the work. So while you might think that Head Start is just Head Start, but Head Start works collaboratively with Early Intervention and other early childhood programs, with the public schools to make sure that the complement of work they’re doing is seamless and that all children are being served the way they need to be served based on their needs and where they’re at. We work collaboratively with other folks who do the same kind of work among all of our programs. We all work together. We do joint trainings and things of that nature for our staff and we work really closely with other nonprofits and community programs that have similar missions to help the community.
We participate in the Bristol County Continuum of Care, working to address homelessness and housing access, working collaboratively with all the folks who are either working with people who are homeless or people who are running housing programs to try to get people re-homed in a secure way.
In the food ecosystem, we run a large grocery-style food pantry. But we don’t do that in a vacuum. We work collaboratively with some of the smaller pantries to try to help them because we have a truck to give them access to additional food by helping to distribute food to them. And working with them to complement what they’re doing so that we’re all trying to meet that demand for additional food security support.
We work in collaboration just talking about trying to address problems in the community. We have partnerships with Southcoast Health, with the Community Health Center. We work closely with the United Way, Child & Family Services, Meeting Street School. Our partnership list is long and it’s dependent on the work that we’re doing. Our whole Workforce Development work that we’re doing includes working closely with Mass Hire and Bristol Community College. We really try to work collaboratively so that we can support the efforts of our partners and vice versa. They do the same for us.
NBL: How do you determine the success of a program?
PK: Well it varies. We have 10 different programs so it looks different in each program. We are successful if we serve all of the folks who apply for fuel assistance in the course of a fuel assistance year. If everybody who’s qualified who comes through our door and we’re able to get them the assistance, then we’ve done our job for that year. Same thing with our childcare subsidies — that’s based on what the state has available and how many we’re able to put forth. If we’re able to get families connected to early childhood providers, if we’re able to give them subsidies to help them pay for care so they can go to work, that’s success. If we are able to maintain our numbers and respond to the demands and the ability of the state to support these efforts.
In our Food Center we see success as providing everybody that walks through the door with some sort of relief in the food space, so they have the ability to spread their resources more widely and be able to meet all of their basic needs.
It’s interesting with food insecurity. You take a look at the numbers that you serve and you say, “Oh my gosh, we’re serving even more people.” That is not necessarily success. It’s success if we’re serving them, absolutely. We’re providing them with relief. It might be a situation that allows them to do more with their resources and ultimately being successful in doing more going forward in their situations, but it’s telling that many of the people in our community are dealing with food insecurity.
So there’s a lot of different ways to measure success. Success is, on the one hand, that we do a really good job with everybody who walks in the door and provide them with something that they need, a tool in their toolbox to help them do what they need for their families. I think the ultimate success would be that there isn’t any poverty.
The reality is that poverty happens for a variety of reasons. There’s not one story that belongs to everybody that is living in poverty. That’s the real truth of it.
NBL: Why is it important to help children?
PK: Research tells everybody that children do best when they have a solid foundation — educationally, basic needs being met, the whole nine yards. It’s critical to try to help families with small children as soon as they’re born, to try to help create a situation, an environment, where they’re supported from birth and it sets them up for success as they move forward. It’s just critical for Head Start kids to have a positive start, so that’s why it’s important.
There are long-term benefits as well. If you give children that solid foundation initially, they’re set up to be ready to go to school, they’re ready to manage the more difficult things they may encounter. The long-term benefits from investments in children are exponential and probably have never been fully researched because it’s so hard to know what the alternative might be. Given the right foundation of the things that they need that helps their development occur in the way that it should, it sets them on a path.
It’s incredibly important for children to have that opportunity to head down that path, and give them the tools that they need to be successful in life.
NBL: How do you determine a person’s qualifications for assistance?
PK: Each program has varying requirements based around the poverty level — 200% of the poverty level and beyond, depending on the program. The benefit amounts for fuel assistance could be higher than, for example, where you might qualify for childcare. In some programs, you may qualify based on the census tract you live in. So it varies by program. We encourage people to reach out and apply if they have a particular need. If we can’t assist, we can get people connected to someone who can.
NBL: What is in the near future for PACE? What are your ambitions for the organization?
PK: I’d like to remain open. I chuckle but it’s not really funny. We would like to be able to come out of this challenging funding time as strong an organization as possible, continuing to support the needs in our community.
Our future really is uncertain at this moment, and it’s uncertain as to how many of our programs will be impacted by some of the actions that are moving forward. The next five months are going to be critical to determining how that plays out.
My ambitions for the organization are to see us come out the other side of these funding struggles and the challenges that we’re faced with right now to be as strong as possible. To meet the demands of the community and to look at other opportunities as needed to keep the work we’re doing up and running and making sure that we are continuing to support the community in every way possible. So that’s my ambition for the next couple of years — to just really keep staff intact, continuing to provide the support to the community, continuing to be what the community needs us to be, and to do a good job at it.
NBL: What do you wish more people knew about PACE?
PK: One of the things we don’t talk about a lot is the fact that we have the ability — our staff really reflect our community. We have the ability to work with folks in their native languages in just about every single one of our programs. People should not be shy if they feel that that might be a barrier. That’s a fun fact about our agency.
I wish that people realized that we do such a wide variety of work. Don’t be afraid to come through the door because we might be able to help you. Maybe we can’t do it directly with one of our programs, but we have such a talented staff, they’re unbelievably compassionate people who just care so much about this community. Anybody who walks through the door, if we don’t find a way to provide them with assistance internally, we have relationships across the community with our partners that they’ll do their best to make sure that people get connected. Nobody walks away without some kind of direction to go in that may be helpful to them.
The agency is really defined by the people that work for it, and they’re really the bread and butter, the heart and soul of what we do. Everybody is such a believer in our mission. We couldn’t do what we do without such a widely talented group of people that work for us. That would be something that I would want more people to know about PACE. We’re in it for the long haul. We’re still open for business, we’re still working until there’s no ability for us to work. Don’t hesitate to reach out.
If you need assistance, visit PACE’s Contact Us page.
Sean McCarthy is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to The New Bedford Light.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
It’s very hard to believe 20% of residents can’t improve their lives, and not live in poverty for two or three generations. I can’t remember any other time in my life when there are so many businesses large and small that can’t find people to fill those job openings, and I know for a fact that there are many people living in poverty and expecting to receive SNAP, heating assistance, Medicaid, job training programs, and more all funded by the tax payer. Most of those low income people don’t want to work and support themselves. When they consider a job opportunity that pays $20.00 per hour to start, they compare what they receive in benefits in the article above, and what they’d receive for working 40 hours per week, 80% will turn down the job every time.
With all that said, it’s the reason they didn’t want the train to come to the city raise the property values which increases rent prices.
Regardless of some feeling it isn’t fair for Medicaid cuts, you’d better get used to it, the federal debt is over $36 Trillion dollars, and the interest on the debt is just under $1 Billion dollars per year, that means much deeper spending cuts that will affect everyone. There’s no happy ending to the financial crisis on the horizon, and the spending cuts are going to happen regardless of who the next 5 presidents are.
GOD HELP US. 😢🙏
Trump is taking away so many services for the needy. The poor are getting poorer, and the rich are getting richer.