- The Lehigh Valley struggles with economic disparities like many cities in this country.

According to the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission, nearly a quarter of Hispanics or Latinos in the Lehigh Valley have a combined household income that is less than $20,000 a year.

This figure is only marginally higher than a single worker's minimum wage income and is less than $24,835 - livable wage for a single childless adult in the Lehigh Valley.

This is especially notable in comparison to white households, nearly one-third which earn $100,000 or more annually.

These disparities for income and poverty between whites, nonwhites and Hispanics or Latinos highlight present conditions.

Insufficient strides have been taken by society to overcome racism.

What has been done is insufficient to reverse centuries of discriminatory practices that still pose barriers to opportunity for those groups today.

CACLV is one organization that makes serious investments into the Lehigh Valley.

Joining me today are three women of color who are leading the way to sustainable change through one of the strongest and most impactful nonprofits in the Lehigh Valley.

Joining me today are Dawn Godshall, executive director of CACLV, Kumari Ghafoor-Davis, director for Racial and Ethnic Justice, Katarah Jordan, director, Second Harvest Food Bank.

Hi, I'm Phillip Davis and welcome to Courageous Conversations.

Dawn, Kumari, thank you for joining me in the studio today, and to Katarah, thank you for taking your time out to be with us today.

You're with us on Zoom.

So we're very grateful for all three of you from this wonderful organization, it's doing great work in the community, to come and spend time and share on Courageous Conversations.

Dawn, congratulations.

You are now the new executive director of CACLV, but there's some rebranding going on.

And again, congratulations.

Talk to me about the rebranding and why do you think the rebranding is necessary now?

- Well, our name said "committee of" and it just sounded ominous.

And we wanted something that was friendlier and a fresh new look.

So we've rebranded to Community Action Lehigh Valley.

- I like it.

I like it.

And so you're taking over after someone who's been there for 40 years.

I believe it was 40.

Alan has, you know, his name is a household name in the Lehigh Valley.

What is your vision for the organization and what are some of the challenges that you're facing as a new African-American woman leading this organization?

- Well, I think one of the first challenges was getting people to understand that I'm not him.

You know, they would tell me "you have big shoes to fill".

And he had a wonderful vision.

He was a great visionary for the organization.

But as an anti-poverty organization, one of the first things that I thought we should do was to raise salaries in our organization so that the people who are doing the hard work are not also struggling to provide for their families.

- That's wonderful.

Can I get a job?

I'm looking for another one.

No, but I mean to be able to embody that, and then from a leadership perspective, be mindful of those that are doing the work.

But you all do so much work.

So what will be kind of the key drivers behind what you're doing or what's going to be happening with CALV?

- One of the largest efforts that we're doing is making sure that there's affordable housing, because everyone, especially in... during the pandemic, started scooping up land, properties, building high-rises, which is great.

But if you're not leaving room for people who can afford to live in your apartments, then it's sort of fruitless to those of us who need to be able to pay our rent every month.

So we are combining our efforts with the cities of Easton, Allentown and Bethlehem, taking blighted homes and fixing them up, selling them, or creating properties that will be used for affordable housing.

- That's wonderful.

You have an affordable housing program, too, that does credit repair and helps people get prepared for mortgages.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

- Yeah, well, it's our housing counseling program.

We do counsel people to get them to be credit-worthy, to be able to buy their first home.

So we have hundreds of people who have bought homes through our program and, you know, it's the only way that people of color can build wealth, really, is to have property, and to be able to see that happen, we're trying to make sure that we are getting people on the right track.

Credit, having good credit is important.

And many of us kind of go on a different path when we're young.

- Sure.

- And we need to fix it at some point in order to get back on where we should be.

- Yeah, I mean, it speaks to a deeper problem.

A deeper issue in regards to the historical creation of wealth for white individuals.

Many people think that African-Americans, many of times our net worth is so low because, you know, we don't know how to handle our money, we like malt liquor and fried chicken, you know, and watermelon and we're lazy and shiftless.

Come on.

I mean, these are the things that came out of the Jim Crow South that perpetuate our society.

And so many people see the conditions that we're in and say, well, if they would just work harder, if they would just lift themselves up by their bootstraps.

But what they don't talk about is the historic systemic racism, from redlining to, you know... - The GI Bill.

- The GI Bill, our folks could fight in the world wars but when they came back,, they weren't able to benefit from these dollars to be able to finance new homes.

And they say that, as you said, the number one way that people build wealth in America is through homeownership.

So, you know, Grandpa buys a house in 1920.

It appreciates in value.

He passes it down to his son or daughter.

They pass it down to their kids.

You can start a business, send your kids off to college, and you're not creating debt.

So therefore, African-Americans did not benefit from that.

And that was a government state-sanctioned redlining that said, for certain people, we're not going to give you loans, right, and we're not going to sell you homes in certain communities.

And when we did try to move into those communities, you know, they were writing covenants that said "you can't sell this house to anyone who is non-white," so the work of housing and repairing what has been done to us over the years... We own, what, one-tenth versus the net worth of a white family.

So we understand that that work is very valuable, is very important.

And these high-rises, for many of the folks in our community, that gentrification is pushing them out and they can't even move back into the same community that they live in.

So thank you for the work you're doing there.

Kumari, you do tremendous work with the organization, I sat in on a few early meetings, with Color Outside The Lines.

Can you talk a little bit about your role and what you do there at CACLV?

Oh, no, it's CALV now.

- Correct.

- CALV.

So let me...

I have to get it in my brain.

- It'll take a while.

- I'm a little older.

But can you talk a little bit about what you do there at CALV?

Yeah, so I'm the director for the Campaign for Racial and Ethnic Justice and there's three programs underneath that department.

So there is the Generation Next program, which is a college prep program for students freshman year through senior.

And that is... - Can you talk about why that's important?

- Well, what happens is there has been a lot of research in the Lehigh Valley stating that students of color don't necessarily take the SAT.

And we wanted to ensure that those students had access to the SAT.

- Right.

- Because reality is SAT prep is expensive.

- Am I correct in assuming that somewhere around 4%...?

I think I read it from the Water Fountain project.

- Water Fountain.

- Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

- So we've been raising those numbers and so we have the college prep program which started in Easton.

It's now been in Easton for six years.

We've been in Bethlehem now for about four.

Yeah.

So now we have juniors and seniors in Easton Area High School, we have freshmen through seniors at Liberty High School.

- Love it.

- Freshmen through juniors at Freedom High School.

And then we started out with Allentown last, in January.

Now we have freshmen and sophomores in Allenstown.

- That's exciting.

So that's called Generation... - Generation Next.

- And what were the other two programs?

- And then the She program is an enrichment program for girls.

That program starts in around fourth, fifth grade.

And we work with Bethlehem Area School District and now we're in Allentown for schools for that district as well.

Yeah.

So we've been working with those girls to empower them, love on them, let them recognize that they should have self-love as well as be some self-sufficient.

And the work that we do with those girls is just trying to empower them so that they feel good about themselves and decide that they want to move on through life and achieve great things.

- That's amazing.

- And they actually can feed into the Generation Next program once they get into high school.

So we actually have our first class of girls who are now freshmen in our Generation Next program that started out as fifth graders in She.

- That's making an impact at the community level.

- We are building bridges.

We are breaking that preschool to prison pipeline as well.

- Wonderful.

Wonderful.

Well, we happen to have Katarah here, too, who works with Second Harvest Food Bank.

Sis, can you tell me a little bit about Second Harvest and what you all do?

Our church actually participates as one of the distributors of food in Easton, and I believe elsewhere as well.

So...and trying to get Bethlehem online.

So maybe we need to call you after the show.

But can you talk a little bit about what you do and how that work is relevant in a time like this?

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Well, we distribute food, of course, we provide nutrition education.

We advocate to end hunger and of course to promote food justice.

We provide food to over a network of 180 nonprofits.

So that's in Carbon, Lehigh Monroe, Wayne, Pike Counties, as well as Northampton, excuse me.

We distribute well over ten million pounds of food a year.

We have seen the uptick, of course, since Covid has hit us, since the killings of George Floyd... We understand here that the systematic things, or the things that are going on in our community heavily, heavily influence the food system and what it looks like.

- So... - Yeah.

How is the food distributed through the multiple counties?

I mean, that covers almost a whole region here, here in the area.

How is that distributed?

I know you partner with different organizations.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

- Absolutely.

So we're Second Harvest Food Bank of Lehigh Valley in northeast Pennsylvania.

So that's the area that we cover.

Our distribution center here works with the pantry or agency network, we like to refer to them as, throughout the counties.

And like I said, it's around 180 pantries that are set up within these counties that actually do the hand to hand distribution.

They are the people who cater to our participants.

They are the ones who are actually building the relationships.

We are just the provider of the food.

So it's our duty to make sure that we are teaching these agencies how to distribute this food with dignity, with respect.

And of course, it's our job to make sure we are providing nutritious, healthy food so that it does reach our communities.

- That's exciting.

Dawn, it's unusual to see an organization specifically here in the Lehigh Valley that is run by people of color.

And at the highest levels.

So how do you, as a woman of color, embrace this responsibility and how are you going to kind of walk that out to continue to do the great work that CALV is doing?

- So, first of all, this is such a proud moment for me to see my team, you know, to have women of color be in this kind of a position.

It's going to be challenging.

There are people who I'm sure will not embrace the fact that I am not the former executive director.

But I think that as a woman of faith, people will see my heart and they will see that I have every good intention on making sure that the people in this valley are provided for in ways that they could never have possibly imagined.

And that's...

It's really important.

We can't... We can't leave people behind.

We really have to grab people by the hand and bring them along with us.

And it's important at all agencies that they are starting to look at diversity and inclusion and making sure that they're not leaving staff that have the potential to grow.

You have to have the ability to cultivate the people who work for you.

- That's good.

That's good.

Kumari, you, with the Color Outside The Lines, were working with people from different pro... Can you talk a little bit about the collaboration that took place and how difficult was it to bring people to the table to have discussions around, you know, diversity, equity, justice, right?

Racism, white supremacy?

That's not a comfortable conversation, but it's a courageous conversation.

So can you talk about what it was like to kind of bring all of those partners to the table?

- Well, we started out, we started everything in round like November 2018, October, November 2018.

And it started out with a racial equity committee.

And then as that racial equity committee grew, as you were part of, you know, we started talking about, you know, let's just have racial conversations and let's just kind of like bring people together in the community.

We worked on churches, we contacted schools.

And then as that grew and we created this I guess you could say presentation for just having conversations around race, what it looks like in the valley, the fact that the Lehigh Valley will be predominantly people of color by 2028, compared to the rest of the national average, where it's like 2035.

And as we started having more of these conversations, it grew into Color Outside The Lines, which became...

Which I do believe we coined that term, Alan coined that term around February, March 2019.

So in June 2019, we formed the Color Outside The Lines Steering Committee, and that ended up being collaborators, partners, people in the different organizations across the Lehigh Valley, the companies across the Lehigh Valley.

And we coined the five different areas that we're focusing on, which is education, quality of life, which encompasses arts and culture, recreation, and...as well as health and mental health.

And then it also encompasses criminal justice, education and housing.

- Wow.

Well, you mentioned one thing that jumped out at me.

All of them are extremely important, I think they're kind of pillars and foundational, but you mentioned mental health.

It's something that we don't talk about enough specifically in impoverished communities with oppressed people.

Mental health is a real issue, especially coming through Covid.

Are there any specific initiatives that are happening with mental health?

Can you talk a bit about that?

- Yes, thank you so much for asking.

We actually just partnered with BB&T, who actually gave us some monies and funds so that we can provide mental health services to people across the valley, people of color who do not have insurance or who have high co-pays.

- Sure.

- And it's a really great... Actually it's a really great initiative that we're starting now.

So we're working on eligibility and criteria.

We're contacting people that we know and people that we heard of that aren't great in mental health so that we can bring those partners together and start to provide services for the people in the valley.

- That's amazing.

Dawn, so is that something that you kind of supported, spearheaded?

I know those partnerships are important because it takes money to do this kind of work.

How do you continue to cultivate those relationships with your banking partners and investors to make sure that things are moving forward?

Actually, they have been gracious enough to come to me.

They came to us with this initiative and we were happy to do it.

- Wonderful.

- We see a lot of people having been impacted by mental health issues during Covid, I have family members who went through depression, and you can only isolate for so long... - That's true.

- ..until it becomes a problem.

So, yeah, we have... Our partners, especially our banking partners, have contacted me after I got the position and just wanted to meet and talk and find out where we were headed.

And so it's been wonderful.

It's been...

It's been a blessing.

- That's exciting.

I mean.

I read a statistic that said that relapses and addiction is up 30%, right, from... And we know it's a problem here in the Valley and nationwide.

So, wow, that's incredible, that whole mental health piece, so glad that your team had the foresight to be able to include that in the conversation, because it's not something that we normally do.

Yeah, I want to jump back to Katarah.

Um, let me ask you, I heard something about a seed farm.

Can you share a little bit about that?

Because, you know, I'm still waiting on my 40 acres and a mule, so... ..is that something I can get in on?

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

We invite you to come and enjoy the land.

But yes, the seed farm, that is one of my dearest, dearest programs here at Second Harvest.

And we have had the ability to cultivate the 42 acres that are there and to work with beginner farmers through our incubator process where we bring young farmers in and kind of teach them the way of farming.

We give them training, we teach them how to use and operate the machinery.

It kind of saves them a lot of money on the front end, when we talk about starting up a farm business.

I am excited.

My role, of course, is to get black and brown people back to the land.

For us to really understand that in order for us to free ourselves, we have to feed ourselves.

I think it is very, very important to get back to that.

When we look at the scheme of things, 1% of farmers are black.

- Wow.

- 1% of farmers are black.

And I think at the seed farm, we are now committed to ending racism and injustice in our food system by teaching people to feed themselves.

And I think that is super, super important.

The self-sufficiency part of what we do is how we are going to outlast the system.

So I am excited to be able to have partnerships with the community nonprofits and getting black and brown students to the land, teaching them.

And I really, really believe that... ..when you grow something, you move away from killing things, and I think that our community needs that in this moment.

The violence is so high.

So I think that really having people pour their hands and their souls into growing and building life will move away some of that violent behavior.

So we invite you, we invite you to come and visit us up at the farm.

Check it out.

It is ours.

It is ours.

And we want to bridge that gap.

- I'll be sure to wear my overalls and my boots and... You know, so I can come out.

But, you know, Katarah, you mentioned that only 1% of farmers are black.

But, you know, that's not by mistake, right?

That was intentional.

This is governmental, institutional, systemic racism from the land grab back in the days to, you know, the extension of land that was given to white farmers and taken from black farmers.

I mean, right after the Civil War, we were given land.

But after the assassination of the president, it was taken back and then reparations were paid to the slave owners for the property that they lost, for the freeing of the slaves.

So when we talk about our current economic situation and even the small percentage of farmers, it is institutional, it's intentional, to keep us broke and poor and not living off the land.

And so programs like this are so critically important.

Now, was the land donated?

Was the land given?

Was the land purchased?

Dawn, should I be asking you that question?

- We lease it from Lehigh County, I think we lease it for a dollar, something like that.

- Which is nice.

I mean, yeah.

- So we, you know, the program had been there for a few years but they...

It was not doing as well as it could have.

So about four years ago, I think, Community Action took over the seed farm.

- Wonderful.

That's exciting.

- It is.

- It really is.

Y'all need to come over to Northampton County too - maybe we can get you some farm.

We got a lot of farmland out there.

- OK!

- I also know that one of the challenges in the valley is around equity in the area of loans and businesses and so forth and so on.

I know that there is a loan program through your organization for small businesses, minority businesses.

Can you talk a little bit about that and how it's come about and how it's impacting the community?

- Sure.

We have... it's called the Rising Tide Loan Fund.

And Rising Tide has given about $9 million over the past...

I think it's been about nine years.

I could be wrong about the number of years.

But for viable businesses that have a good plan, that know what they want to do, we can actually help them to create their business plan.

And if they go to a bank and the bank says, "Well, you're not ready for us yet," we can give them that loan that can help get them started.

- Right, right.

Is that a low interest loan?

- It is.

- Is it forgivable or do they have to pay it back over time?

- They have to pay it back.

But it is low interest in comparison to, you know, going out in the public and getting it.

So many of the banks will loan us money at 2% or 3% interest.

I think many of our loans right now are running at about 6%.

So... - That's amazing because not only do you provide the loans, but you provide mentoring and coaching to really help them walk through the process.

So often when we go into banks, we're sitting across the table from people who don't look like us, and there is historical, documented, recorded realities that we are less likely to get a loan, right, when we walk into a bank.

So being able to sit down with people of color who have an understanding of our context, our reality, our struggle, and to be able to acquire the funds to be able to start a business or maybe even to keep a business going and get working capital is critically important.

And I got an email from a person, I won't call him my friend cos I don't know him, he said, well, why won't you just let the market determine, you know, where folks spend their money?

I said the market has been determining it for 400 years.

And I was I wasn't trying to be curt or flip.

I'm saying, listen, it is important for African-Americans, minorities, to support our businesses, because if we don't, essentially those dollars in our community will not stay in our community.

The dollar stays in the community less than one time, where in other communities it circulates and it is, yes, six or seven times.

Thank you.

And it reinvigorates that community.

And so there's a need for us to support.

So it's amazing that, Dawn, that type of work is continuing to go on.

Kumari, you're the mother of a young man.

How old is he now?

- The oldest is 29, the youngest is 14.

- 14.

I'm sorry, I was talking about your 14-year-old, and he attends school in the Lehigh Valley.

- Yes, he does.

Liberty High School.

- Talk a little bit about that as a mom and the importance of you being present and in his education and what he's experienced, because Liberty is going through some changes as well.

But they have some really strong leadership.

- They do.

They do.

Actually, you know, after Covid, I think a lot of students were struggling, you know, just being...being at home, not being in the classroom.

It was important for us to be in their lives during Covid because I knew a lot of parents who were struggling just to get their kids to work.

- A lot of children fell off.

- Yes.

A lot of kids were staying back.

I know a lot of parents with kids who had to stay back because they did not do the work.

It's important for us to ensure that we're continuing to talk to our kids and make sure we have a pulse on where they are.

A lot of times parents, we're just working towards, you know, just putting food on the table and keeping a roof over our children's heads and it's always not...

The conversations are not always happening at night when we come home from work.

- And it happens more in our community, too, because, again, our wages are lower, so we can't afford to take the days off.

Right?

And many of us can't afford to work from home, right.

- More than one job.

- Working multiple jobs.

- So it's always important for us to ensure that we're constantly having communication with our kids, talking with them, just getting a pulse on where they are and knowing their core is always important.

You know, as a parent, and you know, and my husband and I are constantly having conversations with him just to ensure that we have a pulse on where he is, know where his friends are, who his friends are, you know, knowing what his loves are.

You know, he's taking classes right now, he really enjoys them.

He literally is up before us to get to school now.

- Well, that's good.

That's good, a lot of kids are not like that.

- Yes, yes.

So it's always great to just watch him grow.

I look at him now and it's like, I have three more summers with him.

and then off to college.

- Off to college.

That's wonderful.

Dawn, how can folks get involved with your organization?

There are so many different programs that are going, how can folks connect?

How can folks get involved, maybe even donate or donate their time, resources or anything of that nature?

- We have a volunteer coordinator who if someone wants to come in and, you know, put their hands to work, Katarah can certainly... - Maybe work at the farm.

- Absolutely.

Even at the food bank itself, - we pack boxes for seniors.

- Oh, wonderful.

- Yeah.

There are a lot of different things that we do.

We have the largest family shelter in the region.

So there are things at the Sixth Street shelter that people can do, so they can either give of their time, their talent or their treasure.

- I love it.

Sounds biblical to me.

That's great.

And so they would just contact... - They would just call CALV and ask to speak to our volunteer coordinator and we'll get them busy in something.

We've got a lot of things going on, including a, um, a youth center that we're trying to build in Allentown.

- That was going to be my last question.

In one minute, can you talk a little bit?

Because we're right at the end.

But yeah, talk a little bit about what you're trying to do.

- Sure.

Well, I grew up in foster homes, so I know that there was a place that I could go growing up, that I could do my homework, I could have fun.

I played basketball, I did archery.

And my parents had, or someone had to come and sign for me to sign me out.

So it's a safe place.

So just like Kumari said, between the hours of three and six, that's when most kids get in trouble.

They need a safe place where they can, you know, go get education get help with their homework, mentoring, have fun and be able to enjoy life.

That's how we keep our kids safe and out of trouble and encourage them to be better.

- So is there a location at this point or are we just raising funds right now?

- We have a location that we have to still put an RFP out, you know, answer an RFP for, but yeah.

- Good.

Well, you heard it here on Courageous Conversations.

We're believing that something will happen there in Allentown.

And if it can get done, CALV will do that.

And with leadership like yourself and all of the women that we've had the opportunity to speak to today, we know the future looks very, very bright for your organization.

I'd like to thank all of my guests for taking the time, Dawn, Kumari and Katarah, to come and talk and share about all the wonderful things that are going on.

You know, so often we focus on the negative, but there are organizations that are doing really good work.

I'm Pastor Phillip Davis.

And on behalf of everyone here at PBS39, I'd like to thank you for joining us.

Keep being courageous.

We'll see you soon.