Meet the women who teach financial skills to the homeless

Anita Saville and Kathy Brough formed Budget Buddies in 2010 to help homeless women lift themselves out of poverty. Learn how they created a network of everyday financial coaches who support low-income women in learning money management and achieving self-sufficiency.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.



1 Name two reasons why women end up in poverty
2 Who are the buddies?
3 Where did Kathy start volunteering 23 years ago?
4 What work does Anita do? What work does Kathy do?
5 Apart from financial workshops, what other workshops are organised?
6 Why did they manage to get so many professional to volunteer for their project in the first couple of years?
7 What do ‘275’ and ‘400’ refer to?

So, Nancy is coming back to us to coach. I believe this is her seventh time coaching.
Wow.
Well I have somebody here who says that they don’t know how to make a budget, they don’t have a bank account.
I wonder if we should put her with a tough buddy.
Okay.
A lot of women end up in poverty for various reasons. Their families have been living in poverty for years, and years, and years. They have little financial education. Then you couple that with poor role models, lots of personal financial challenges, and women are just overwhelmed by, by money issues.
Jasmine Torros, she wants to get her life back on track.
Budget Buddies provides financial education for low-income women through an innovative program that combines 12 instructional workshops with one-to-one coaching. The women who are the clients, who come to us through social service agencies, we call them the buddies.
You don’t have to have a financial background to be a coach in Budget Buddies. You just have to care about women helping women.I’ve always done finance and operations for small businesses. 23 years ago I started volunteering at a homeless shelter and became a client advocate ’cause I felt I could offer them help applying for benefits.
I worked for Fidelity Investments as an editor, but, while I was writing for upper income and middle-income folks, what was happening for the folks who didn’t have advice on how to manage their money?
We realized that we worked pretty well together and we complemented each other in terms of the things that we liked to do.
Yes. It’s lucky that, you know, I don’t like the podium and Anita does. So I do the finances and she does the writing so, perfect.All workshops are about an hour and they’re scheduled every two weeks. On the in between week the coach and her buddy can meet and apply what they learned in the workshop to the buddy’s individual financial situation. We also have workshops that deal with self-esteem, changing behavior, and really giving the women the confidence that they need in order to be able to go on and manage their money after Budget Buddies stops.
The first couple of years it’s hard to convince funders that you’re going to be around, because you’re the new kid on the block and we started our organization just at the top of the recession so people were laid off, people were, you know, they were closing nonprofits. That actually worked to our benefit because a lot of professionals who were out of work said, “Well, what am I going to do with myself? Well, I’ll go volunteer,” so they brought their professional talent in.
And they’ve been meeting with them about Budget Buddies, they’ve been trying to talk to them about their goals.
Great.
Yes.
It was like a learning base between the both of us, you know. Step by step. Like I’ve shown her stuff, she’s shown me stuff, you know, we kind of give and take.
There’s a tradition we have at graduation. Because it’s the last night that the group is going to be together, we have the buddy say something to the coach and the coach say something to the buddy.
Our graduations are very special. We get to every graduation.
You have done something that a lot of people never do. Never make a budget, never really put money away for savings, never track their expenses to see how much they’re spending. So you are so far ahead of most of the people in this country. And for that, we give you applause. 

Key:

1 little financial education, poor role models, lots of personal financial challenges

2 The women who are the clients, who come to us through social service agencies

3 at a homeless shelter

4 Kathy does the finances and Anita does the writing

5 workshops to give women self-esteem, confidence and change their behaviour

6 Because of the recession there were a lot of professionals out of work

7 The programme has trained 275 coaches to help more than 400 buddies.

 

London coffee shop gives the homeless a second shot at life

From pastry chef to heroin addict and now trainee barista, Ecevit Tihsinhatga is rebuilding his life, through his job at Second Shot Coffee shop.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.



1 When did Julius Ibrahim move to London?
2 What passions does he mention?
3 How did Ecevit Tahsin end up living in the street?
4 What did he start using while he was on the streets?
5 How long has he been working at Second Shot?
6 What’s Emilio’s responsibility at Second Shot?
7 What does Second Shot also give to the homeless, apart from training people?
8 What was the increase in the number of people living on the streets in England last year?

We take people here at face value, we don’t judge, whoever you are, whatever you need, if we can help, we will.
In East London, a coffee shop has opened, employing people who have experienced homelessness in the past. Second Shot was founded by Julius Ibrahim. He dropped out of university and started a crowd fund campaign to get the social enterprise off the ground.
I moved to London in 2013 and I was just kind of surprised that there wasn’t anything more being done to alleviate the problem. So, I just wanted to kind of do something and the raise the profile of the issue, really and yeah, I just had a passion for coffee and passion for the industry.
Ecevit Tahsin, also known as Edge, works at Second Shot.
My own experience of homelessness is a very dark, very cold place. I used to be a pastry chef. I was with a partner at the time. I came home one night from work to find that she was messing about with someone in the house. We split up and because everything was in her name, I ended up on the streets. If you can imagine winter, freezing cold in a sleeping bag, trying to keep warm, trying to sleep.
During his time on the streets, Edge started using heroin.
Being on the drugs, I’m not gonna say it helped me, but it makes you numb, so you don’t feel what’s going on around you. But once my family found out I was on drugs, they kind of pushed me away. Nobody really understood me, what I was going through, what I was feeling and I was very isolated.
Edge managed to get himself off heroin and after living in hostels and temporary accommodation, he’s now being given his own flat. He’s been working at Second Shot since it opened in May 2016.
Being here has really given me a sense of purpose and helping me to re-establish my life.
Emilio is the head of coffee at Second Shot. He’s been training the homeless employees working at the café.
We started the training two weeks before we open. The idea of working with people who have been under a lot of like disadvantages, and they don’t trust people, you see, they don’t, they have a lot of issues in terms of like they don’t think that they are good enough for anything. We are trying to get the best coffee we can and at the same time helping the community around here.
As well as training people who’ve lived on the streets, Second Shot also gives free food and drink to the homeless.
With our loyalty card, after six times, each customer can get a free coffee but if they want to after three, what you can do is rip it half and hand it to someone on the street, that they can use to come in and get a free coffee. Our ‘pay it forward’ system is where our customers pre-pay for something, so that later someone off the streets can get it for free. Our customers have really embraced the idea and got behind it. We’ve given away almost 300 meals.
I’m a homeless person at the moment. I come in here every day and to get a free coffee and every time I come in here I always get a big ‘hello’. In fact, these people, sometimes wouldn’t have anywhere to get anything to eat.
The average person in the UK is only two paycheques away from becoming homeless. So, literally it can happen to anyone, and breaking down that social stigma, and getting people to understand, and getting people to give you a second shot is really challenging.
Last year there was a 30% increase in the number of people living on the streets in England. Lack of work is a major cause and consequence of homelessness.
The most rewarding part for me is doing what I love the most and also having it, making it for a good reason. Every day our customers come here and they are really happy with us, they love what we do.
I’ve been given a lot of responsibility. There is not many places like this where someone from the street can come in and feel like a part of the community. That for me really hits it home.

Key:
1 In 2013
2 Passion for coffee and for the industry
3 He split up with her partner.
4 He was on drugs, on heroin.
5 Since May 2016.
6 Training new staff.
7 Free food and coffee.
8 30%.

Homeless in New York: The Other Millennials

They’re recognizable by their overstuffed backpacks, dogs, and cardboard panhandling signs. They’ve been given many labels: gutter punks, crusties, street kids.

In New York, their base is the East Village, that long-time hub for young people on the fringes; when the weather grows cold, many will hitchhike or “hop freight” to warmer cities in the South or out West.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.



1 People are eager to get more and more stuff, according to the first girl.
2 The couple met through a dog.
3 The boy was thrown out of his parents' home.
4 The second girl was homeless as a child.
5 The girl with the dog resents people taking pictures of her.
6 The three of them are happy with their life style.
7 The boy is trying to find himself.

Shut up!
People always want more, I guess. I grew up listening to my stepfather be like, oh if only I had a house. And then he gets a house.  And then it's like, if only I had a car in the garage. Then you get a car, and it's like, if I just had a boat. A lot is lost in wanting more stuff.
I don't want too much. It would be nice to have a lot of things, but at the same time, I feel like if I had them, I wouldn't feel good about having them, so… so why want them, really?
Everybody's trying to help you defeat the homeless problem, get back on your feet, like we tripped a little bit. There's not a place for this to exist, we just do it anyway.
We came here to try and make money to get a new pack.
Once I figured out happiness without money, it seemed really silly to compromise myself to make money.
Do you want me to brush your hair?
How'd we meet?
She came up and talked to my dog.
In Portland.
I'm from Springfield, Missouri, and I'm always welcome in my parents' home. I'm my own person.  I've heard my mom say that a couple times with just a touch of forced pride. 
What pants are you going to wear? Because I'm wearing your pants.
They have a board with a world map on it with pins from where everybody's from that's eaten here.
My parents just lost our house, so my childhood home is now gone.
I'd say most of us have had huge structural failures in their life support system.
It's Charlie.  That's my baby.  Greatly appreciated.  People like the dog.
Can you not take my picture, please? Thank you.
People do that all the time.  They just stop in front of you like you're in the zoo or something and take your picture.
All right.  Now he's ready to play.
We really know how to clear a place, huh? It's OK. Shake it off.
Probably most of us are leaving something we don't like. And then once you start free-falling, everywhere, there's just this culture that will reach out and help you stand back up. Or keep going.
There's a bunch of kids around the corner if you guys want to hang out with them.
Awesome.
If you're sitting on the ground someplace here people don't sit on the ground, they know something's wrong.
Is something wrong?  No.  I suppose I may be taking advantage of that misconception.
Let's hope for better days.
Because I don't give them their money back and explain, oh no, you have misjudged the entire situation.
I actually am OK doing this.
I'm really happy right now.  It's almost my job to just eat that discomfort.
I really don't know what the hang up is. I like working.  I like getting up and having something to do and feeling accomplished, and doing that and getting my paycheck at the end of the week, earning something. But I doubt if I got it, that I'd be satisfied.
Self-exploration is only possible when you have a multitude of different experiences.  If you're doing the same thing over and over again, you don't have any idea who you are in another place, doing another thing.
I just want to enjoy myself. For now, I mean, I plan for the future… I just do it differently.  And the adventure parts a lot of fun.
Yeah, it's all about the adventure.

KEY:
1T 2T 3F 4F 5T 6T 7T

Buses in San Francisco for the homeless

Lava Mae ('Wash me' in Spanish) is a San Francisco non-profit project which aims to deliver dignity  to the homeless by providing them with access to mobile shower and toilet facilities.

Self-study activity:
Watch the five-minute video and say whether the statements below are true or false.



1 Lava Mae intends to set up 7 shower stalls for the San Francisco homeless.
2 Doniece Sandoval learnt about the replacement of San Francisco buses in a meeting.
3 Public showers were prohibited in San Francisco in 1992.
4 The biggest challenge they are facing is what to do with the used water.
5 Doniece Sandoval can feel the public support for the idea.
6 Similar ideas to the Lava Mae project have been put into practice somewhere else.
7 They use a 50-litre water tank for heating the water.
8 Users are expected to spend half an hour having a shower.
9 A non-profit organisation is advising the people behind the Lava Mae project.

There are only seven locations in the city of San Francisco where if you're homeless, you can go to take a shower. We're looking at 16 to 20 shower stalls for the 3,500 people who actually live on a street and that's untenable and I just thought if you can put gourmet food on wheels and take it anywhere, why not showers and toilets?
I had seen an article on the Chronicle recently about the Feds providing money to the city to replace these old diesel buses and I just started thinking I wonder what they're going to do with those buses? I want those buses!' So we reached out to Muni and we found out that they have a donation programme.
So we're transforming a passenger vehicle into, essentially, a bathing facility.
You want to see this tucked back tighter?
Correct.
And you want to see a cove?
Yeah.
We brainstorm for several months how this could even be possible in a city like San Francisco which is so ridden with permitting and regulatory hurdles. The actual bus we're using is a 1992 Gillig Phantom Bus. It's an Enguno bus which historically ran from all the way down to the Sunset.
To drive a bus like this and have big, giant water tanks, we completely destabilized it. So we, for example, will be drawing water from fire hydrants.
The biggest challenge I think was how to deal with all the black water and gray water which is generated from two showers running every half hour, three hours a day. That's a lot of water.
You can see the shell of the bus and then the two shower pods which are inserted inside the confines of the exterior wall.
Over and over again people said, you are crazy and we love this idea and we will support you if you go out and get it done.
My name is Chris Doherty. We're here at Airco Mechanical in Sacramento, California. We're in the mechanical room of the Lava Mae Bus. We have the engine here on this side of the wall. We have the mechanical room here which is all the workings of the bus and then we have the two bathrooms as we work forward on the bus. The biggest challenge is in completing this is nobody's ever done this before so a lot of just trial and error.
So the unique thing about this particular plumbing system is that you would see this in a small commercial building or residential house and we put this in the back of a Muni bus to run two full bathrooms. So this here, we have a 50 gallon hot water heater, it's powered by propane and this delivers all the hot water to our showers, our lavie's and our heating system.
So the unique thing about this particular bathroom here is that we have skylights in here, we have a digitally-controlled shower, we have hot and cold and we're still on a bus.
It's just two units that have a shower, a sink, a toilet and a small changing area so, it's idea of even though you're only going to be on the bus for 20 minutes or so, it's 20 minutes of complete privacy and respite to hopefully recharge yourself in a lot of ways.
We decided that what we would do is partner with an existing non-profit that's already serving the homeless that ultimately doesn't have showers and sanitation available to them. So we augment the services that they're offering and we also benefit from their expertise and their wisdom about how to operate best in this realm.
Lava Mae is not about ending homelessness. What we are about is providing hygiene because we believe that hygiene brings dignity and dignity opens up opportunity.

Key:
1F 2F 3F 4T 5T 6F 7F 8F 9T

Talking point: The economic crisis, homelessness and poverty

There is great concern about the international economic crisis, as it is affecting most sectors of societies worldwide, especially in countries like Spain. Strikes and political instability are spreading while the unemployment rate soars, the quality of life keeps deteriorating and we don’t seem to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Go over the questions below and think about the answers, so that ideas flow more easily when you get together with the members of your conversation group and you can deal with vocabulary issues beforehand.

- Why have we ended up in this deep international recession?
- Who is to blame?
- How is the economic situation affecting our society?
- How is the situation affecting you on a personal level?
- What can we as individuals do to cope with the situation?
- What can governments do to improve the situation?
- How is it possible that an ordinary citizen ends up homeless or living in poverty?

- Have you ever talked to a homeless/poor person?
- Have you ever helped a homeless/poor person? If so, how?
- What do you do when a beggar asks you for money?
- Would you pay more taxes if this eliminated poverty by creating jobs for everyone?
- Are you or have you been involved with a charity? Do you know anyone who is?
- How do volunteers involved in charities help people? How much time do they devote to helping others?

To illustrate the topic you can watch CBS's Hard Times Generation: Families living in cars, released in their programme 60 minutes, about two ordinary American families who became homeless because of the economic recession.



You can read the transcript for the segment here or activate the CC subtitles in the lower side of the video players.

Talking point: Street children

This week's talking point is Street Children. The idea for the topic stems from a post on Feride Hekimgil's The prop room in mid April.

Before getting together with your friends to discuss the topic, go over the questions below so that ideas flow more easily in your conversation session and you can deal with vocabulary problems beforehand.

• What do you know about the problem of children living on the streets?
• Is it a serious issue of concern where you live?
• In what areas of the world is the problem of street children more serious?
• Why do children end up on the streets?
• What problems may these children face?
• How do you think street children survive?
• Are street children budding criminals?
• What can governments do to deal with the problem?
• What can the man in the street do to help?

To gain further insight into the topic, you can watch a promotional video for the Street Children campaign in Ukraine, and a The Guardian video with accompanying article on the way some street children live in Kiev. I have been unable to embed the latter video, but you can watch it by clicking on  The Guardian link. You will find the transcript for both videos below.

Street Children from banda on Vimeo.

The problem of street children in Ukraine is reaching a catastrophic dimension. Due to non-official data there are about 200,000 homeless children in the country. They are under the poverty line: ill and poor. Unfortunately, most people ignore them. According to the Unicef report, police even gathers street children together and removes them outside the city. So what are we doing with something we do not want to see. We simply remove it. Out of your sight, out of you mind. Like some litter in the streets, we just want it clean any reminder about the problem away. But it does not help. A piece of paper is easily removed, but the problem of street children will stay.
We encourage you to remove it, so you realize that the problem actually cannot be removed. You do not want to get involved but you already are by tempting people to rip off the picture and create the impulse of removing it we raise the awareness of the problem and make people think. Now it will stay in their mind.
Of course we do replace the ripped-off figures. Of course we easily do continue the same interactive mechanic media.
Today internet is the new reality we live in. That’s why it is so important to bring the mechanic here into life too with pop-up and banners. We want people to feel that they try to remove a matter that bothers them now it will waste future lives. Soon homeless children will appear back on the streets and only your support will lead them back to society.
Of course, we use the full possibilities of the internet, especially social media. We created a page on the Facebook and added popular users and celebrities as friends. The idea is really simple. We enter their profile, capture any picture taken on the street posted by the user and enter the print of homeless kids into the file, then replace the picture back to the album and tag it. The picture appears on the user’s wall and his or her numerous friends can see it. The owner of the picture now faces a dilemma. To remove it off his wall or keep it. This is how it works. Minor efforts bring huge awareness.
These simple street acts raise public awareness of the homeless kids problem an effective advert excites actual interest in Ukranian society to the problem. Donations for homeless children hotline help and support of any homeless kid on the street.

I met 17-year-old Seryozha outside a church where he’d been begging. I asked him why he didn’t use the shelters. He said he felt trapped in them. He agreed to show me where he lived.
He shows how he gets through.
Head first through here.
Seryozha shares his basements with two other young homeless people.
It´s just scraps of food that they found. It’s very, very dark and it’s stuffy and it’s hard to breathe but notable thing is just how many tubes of glue there are lying around.
They told me that three of those tubes is enough to keep them high for the whole day. I imagine it’s quite a big dose.
They said the glue they sniff takes away feelings of cold and hunger, but it also causes brain damage.
It’s hard to know what to say. This is a very profound and depressing place.
No one could tell me how many street children there are in Ukraine. As I discovered they live hidden lives.

Talking point: Homelessness

This week's talking point is Homelessness. Before getting together with the members of your conversation group think about the answers to the questions below, which you can use as a springboard for the discussion.


Do the homeless share some characteristics?
How does a homeless person end up being homeless?
What's a homeless person typical day like?
How do they get food and 'accommodation'?
What roles do families and friends play in the life of a homeless person?
To what extent are governemts to blame for the situation of the homeless?
What should governemts do to reduce the problem?
Can ordinary people help the homeless?


To gain further insight into the topic you can read Susan Saulny's article for The New York Times AFTER RECESSION MORE YOUNG ADULTS ARE LIVING ON THE STREET.

In the video below Susan Saulny  talks with some young people who have been mentioned in her article and who are struggling with homelessness as a result of the recession and the economic crisis.

You may also be interested in the video listening activity Homelessness, which we published in June last year, about the charity Home for Good.

Shelter is a UK charity which provides for the homeless and so is The Big Issue.

Homelessness

The topic of homelessness is touched on in unit 5 of module 8 in the That's English! programme, so the video on this post fits in perfectly with that unit.

I first saw this Homeless video on Rob Whyte's excellent ESLWriting. As a matter of fact, you can find a listening activity there.

However, I think that the level of difficulty is a bit high for intermediate students to understand it fully, which made me think that I should provide the transcript if I wanted students to make something out of it.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and complete the blanks in the transcript with the missing words.



I served in the (1)...  . I’d been working (2) ... years. Right up to my retirement I hurt my (3) ...  . Yeah, I lost my job and next thing I knew I was in the street, you know? (4) ... .

I’m sorry, man.

Hurts to live in this country, shouldn’t have to live like that.

It could happen to anybody. When you are in a situation like this you don’t think nobody (5) ... . It’s great to have somebody care about you. People that (6) ... me was good enough. They helped me a whole lot.

I was off the street and now I have a nice (7) ... place of my own. There’s a whole lot of people out there need help. A lot of them don’t even  know where to go. I am a lucky one. I am lucky.

Key:
1 military 2 thirty-five 3 leg 4 Homeless 5 care 6 helped 7 clean