By Benton Murphy, Associate Vice President, Community Investment
Benton Murphy, AVP, Community Investment
Even before the COVID-19 crisis, much of our region was struggling. Nearly one in five of our neighbors reported that they could only make it by for less than one month if they lost their current sources of household income. Even more worrisome, nearly one-third of residents reported being very or slightly worried about being able to pay their rent or mortgage on a good day. Three months ago, these were answers to hypothetical questions. Now as we face the ongoing COVID-19 public health and economic crisis, these statistics are a stark reality for so many.
These report findings, collected by Gallup for the Greater Washington Community Foundation, were intended to serve as a point in time snapshot of our region for our VoicesDMV initiative. The Community Foundation leads this community engagement initiative every few years with a focus on listening to our community in a deep and authentic way. As a community foundation, we want to ensure our community investment and community leadership strategies are informed by the needs of real people in the community—especially those whose voices are left out of important conversations about community needs and priorities.
In 2017, our first VoicesDMV survey revealed a region in which residents may be separated by income, education or geographic boundaries, but share similar hopes and dreams. We all want a better overall quality of life for ourselves and our families, including the opportunity to live in a safe and welcoming environment, obtain a quality education, earn a living wage, and build assets for a secure future.
And yet, as prosperous as our region is, our survey found that deep disparities in income and opportunity persist and that these gaps continue to widen. Due to historical discrimination, this prevents many of our neighbors, particularly people of color, from accessing the region’s economic growth and prosperity. We are so thankful and grateful to the community for their participation in VoicesDMV in 2017. Your perspective gifted The Community Foundation with insight to shape our Building Thriving Communities framework with updated priorities for our grantmaking, which focus on preparing for the future of work, disrupting poverty, and deepening human connections.
The 2020 report offers unique insight into how the region looked and felt in the months immediately preceding the COVID-19 pandemic and massive civil unrest following the killing of George Floyd. The report reveals a Greater Washington community with a lot to celebrate. Across our region, the survey identified bright prospects across many issue areas, including education and the state of the economy.
The report also revealed striking findings that again illuminated a deeply inequitable region, which we see this in COVID-19’s devastating effect on our region’s low-income households and communities of color. These individuals are much more vulnerable to the economic and health shocks exacerbated by this crisis because of these pre-existing inequities.
While the sentiments expressed in the survey have certainly shifted since it was fielded, the data provides us insights into how we looked pre-COVID. This hopefully offers direction on what we can do differently as we look beyond emergency recovery and relief toward rebuilding a more equitable and resilient region.
What’s Next?
Another critical component of our VoicesDMV initiative is convening and conversation. In 2017, we held community conversations and focus groups discussing a range of issues and challenges, including quality education for our children, fear of the police, and perceptions of race and racism. As we worked to prepare our VoicesDMV initiative for 2020, we wanted to incorporate new elements to deepen the extent to which we engaged communities, reached “unusual suspects,” and enabled authentic dialogue.
This fall, we hope to host a series of virtual On the Table community conversations – a nationally-known community engagement initiative first piloted by the Chicago Community Trust – to challenge our region to think about how we can rebuild after the pandemic toward a more equitable future. On the Table brings together friends, colleagues, neighbors, and strangers to discuss what matters to them in their community over a meal.
Our focus for these conversations will be on equity and how it intersects with a range of issues that are important to our community, including education, workforce development, housing and homelessness, the arts, the environment, and many more issue areas. From these conversations, we plan to make community micro-grants from the VoicesDMV Community Action Awards grant program to support grassroots and neighborhood-level projects and initiatives that will help us to re-envision our region in a more equitable light.
As we begin to look beyond responding to the immediate crisis at hand, our region’s recovery cannot be a return to the status quo as previously captured by our survey. We all have a role to play in shaping a “new normal” and rebuilding as a community that offers equal opportunity for all residents to thrive. I am convinced we will overcome this crisis and period of uncertainty by standing together—neighbors helping neighbors—to build a more equitable region for the future.