“We have to thank our staff and board of directors for helping us to survive for 44 years,” said Charles Holloway Sr., the agency’s executive director.
DCCA is a community-based non-profit organization that provides employment, education, housing counseling, personal development and financial management services to disadvantaged citizens of Davidson County. It was chartered in 1965 as part of the “War on Poverty.” At the end of the program year in July 2009, the DCCA had helped 977 people who sought assistance from the agency.
Gene Nichol, professor of law and director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, spoke to those in attendance about the reality of poverty in this state and the nation.
“I was delighted to come because of those who are at every table here who do such powerful work ... in the venue of poverty, working against the odds, trying to make the promise of this noble democracy real,” Nichol said.
He said that drastic steps being taken at the state and federal level, such as costly bailout bills and calls for nationalized health care and even banks, are evidence of a society that thinks it is facing a crisis. With state and national deficits running high and unemployment figures reaching record levels, people have felt an urgent need to take action.
“We’ve done all of this because we believe our plight to be unacceptable,” Nichol said. “But what have we, for the last decade, believed to be acceptable?”
Even while many people were content, about 15 percent of North Carolina citizens — more than 1.4 million people — have been living in poverty, he said. Ethnic minorities, coastal plain counties and children face the worst of it.
“Easily, one in five North Carolina kids are living in poverty — one in three black kids and four out of 10 Hispanics,” he said. “Of any state, North Carolina has the second highest number of kids who live with repeated hunger.”
He cited the increasing income disparities in the United States, rising inequality in educational opportunity, and the growing number of uninsured Americans as reasons not to be content with the state of society.
“How can we have been satisfied, thinking it was no emergency?” Nichol said. “We need to keep in mind that lots of us have been in peril long before the crashes of 2008 and 2009.”
Nichol praised DCCA’s work and encouraged them to keep helping people that might otherwise be forgotten. Holloway said that the speech made him think about DCCA’s role in remedying those situations.
“It brought up some things that we need to address in cultural issues, poverty, and the economy,” Holloway said. “It was good food for thought.”
Also at the banquet, Belinda Clark received the Winifred Blanton award for board member service, Christie Jarrell received the Helen Caple award for self-sufficiency and Kimberly Hume received Barbara Walser award for service.
Staff Writer Karissa Minn can be reached at 888-3576 or newsdesk@tvilletimes.com.
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