Elkhart County Works Together is celebrating this week of wonderful weather by launching an ambitious campaign aimed at generating 1000 hours of paying work for people in the ECWT Skills Bank!
Click to continue reading “A Week of Wonderful Weather and Work (4W Campaign)”
The 4W campaign is designed to generate 1000 hours of paid work for unemployed people in Elkhart County in one week, from November 11 to November 18. We challenged residents of Elkhart County who have work to do around the outside of their houses and yards to find people in the ECWT Skills Bank and pay them to work.
Click to continue reading “Sorry, we can’t tell you exactly how it’s working”
We sometimes explain ECWT using the metaphor of “stone soup,” based on the story from antiquity about the stranger who came into a starving town and used his “magic stone” to make stone soup, supplemented, of course, by the vegetables the villagers brought out of hiding in their cellars to “give more flavor” to the stone soup. The lesson was about sharing: if we all share what we have, we can make it through anything.
If you have five (5) minutes to spend, you can find out how this story is working today in Elkhart County!
Hi, friends:
I’m on my way home, sitting in the AMTRAK cafe car, rolling through the mountains of Western Pennsylvania. My thoughts are turning to you all, as they have many times these last few days.
I am grateful to all of you for the gift you gave me of keeping the ship of state afloat while I was gone. I could rest easy in PA, knowing that things were proceeding apace.
Not that I want to scare anybody – there’s no profanity here. However, I’ve been struck by some of the extremes of language I’ve heard used by unemployed people in the last few weeks.
ECWT is built on a foundation of affirmation, and claiming self-worth. Our tag line uses strong language to make a bold claim: We are strong. We are creative. We are an asset to our community.
Thanks to all who helped make our first ever salsa contest a great success! There were many of you: sponsors/donors, individuals who made purchases, those who made donations, and those who volunteered time. The local community certainly came together for this event. All of us helped in raising almost $800 and all within a context in which we came together despite being at different points on the political, religious, socioeconomic, cultural, or educational spectrums.
Goshen-area residents can taste homemade salsa and cast ballots for their favorite recipe during a contest set Oct. 2 at Goshen’s First Fridays.
Garden Salsa Contest Flier
The event that will be on Washington Street in downtown Goshen, will offer $1 bags of chips for salsa testing, and then participants can place a donation in a designated bucket for the salsa they think is best.
No one person can speak for the thousands of unemployed and under-employed* workers in Elkhart County this Labor Day. My personal experience of being under-employed, and of leading Elkhart County Works Together for the last half year, leads me to offer a few personal reflections this Labor Day, and to be so bold as to use the pronoun “we” to reflect that experience.
A good place to start is by quoting Amy Hapner, featured on the front page of the Elkhart Truth this morning, who tells those who are currently employed, “Be very, very thankful you have a job.” Being without a job for a prolonged period makes us more aware than ever of the blessings and benefits of working.
Click to continue reading ““Not so well, thanks, how about you?””
A month ago, our family went East to Virginia for a family vacation. A week later, we went to Michigan. Today, I’m writing from Hesston, KS, pretty close to the heartland of America.
Everywhere we went we encountered travel delays because of road work. Bridges, passing lanes, shoulder repair, new exchanges – the jack hammers and dump trucks and people were out in force.
It wasn’t until we drove past Kansas City yesterday and saw workers re-building a mall that I realized we had seen almost no construction activity during those travels through 9 of the 50 states. No new houses. No other new office buildings.
What we saw was people working because of the massive government investment in infrastructure. And as we drove along those roads, we heard the radio discussion of the ending of the Cash for Clunkers program because it had been so successful, and moved almost 500,000 cars off dealers’ showrooms.
And I remembered the news in Elkhart County during this time. New jobs coming to Monaco Coach – Navistar because of a Federal government grant. The possibility of new jobs manufacturing energy efficiency equipment that is dependent on Elkhart County tax abatements.
Many of us in Elkhart County have traditionally been critical of government spending, or government involvement in the economy. Now, we seem to be not only appreciative of government spending, we are heavily dependent on it. Our sense of possible recovery in Elkhart County is heavily based on Federal grants for new manufacturing, State programs to re-train workers, and County tax abatements to attract new businesses.
Maybe our circumstances are calling us to move beyond the mantra that ”government involvement in the economy is bad” to the question, “How can we best use our collective resources (government money) and individual resources (private capital) to work for the public good?”
What do you think?
Despite ongoing negative economic news and financial challenges for families, personal financial stability is attainable.
Jonathan Geiser, associate professor of Business at Goshen College, will lead a workshop called “Dollars & Sense: Achieving Personal Financial Stability.”
What: Family financial stability workshop
When: Thursday, Aug. 27, 6:30 to 8 p.m.
Where: Goshen College’s Newcomer Center, Room 17
Cost: Free
Newcomer Center is located at the south edge of the campus (1700 S Main St, Goshen), southeast of the stoplight at Westwood Road and South Main Street. Parking is available in the College Mennonite Church parking lot behind Newcomer Center.
The session will outline elements necessary for achieving stability of personal and household finances, will address financial challenges and offer common-sense solutions.
Topics include creating a game plan, household budgeting, securing your family’s safety nets, debt management, communicating with creditors, saving and wealth building.
“This session sends a message of hope — that financial stability is attainable and your could achieve it sooner than you think,” Geiser said.
Elkhart County Works Together, a grass-roots initiative based in Goshen, is helping coordinate the event.
Geiser teaches finance, strategic management and entrepreneurship and is director of business development for Goshen College’s Center for Business and Entrepreneurial Education.
Prior to joining the college in 2008, Geiser accumulated more than 20 years of experience in both large and small companies in Spain, the United Kingdom and the U.S. He held a variety of senior financial and managerial positions in industries including automotive, recreational vehicle, furniture manufacturing, executive education and financial services. He is a certified independent trainer in Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University program.
Information: info@ecwt.org or call (574) 534-0903
