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Stand Together Against Poverty

How one couple harnessed the power of community to help mobile park kids succeed in school.

How one couple harnessed the power of community to help mobile park kids succeed in school.
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Jim and Melinda Hollandsworth weren't planning to start a nonprofit. They just wanted to help a few kids with their homework.

When the Hollandsworths sponsored a local family for Christmas through their church in 2008, they thought it would just be a one-time thing. But when they saw that the large family's mobile home was only four miles from their Atlanta-area home, they realized they were essentially neighbors.

After their visit with the family, they wanted to come back, but not just because they enjoyed the family's company — they realized the family was living in suburban poverty, and wanted to see if there were more ways they could help them.

All photos via Path Project.

So, they randomly dropped by for a visit every so often. Eventually, the kids started sharing what was going on in their lives.

"The biggest thing that stuck out to us," says Melinda, "was that the younger kids could all tell you what they wanted to be when they grew up—a teacher, a doctor, whatever their big dream was. But when they talked about their older siblings, it was a different story. They would share of one who'd been deported, one who was in jail, and an older sister who was still high school age who had already had one, maybe two babies. So, there was a disconnect there."

The high school graduation rate of students in that neighborhood was a startling 33%.

During one of their visits, Maria, a 6th grader in the family asked Melinda if she could help her with her homework because her mom and dad didn't speak English. Since she had a background in education, Melinda looked over her school work and realized that she was already failing in most subjects. Maria was not on a path to succeed.

The Hollandsworths discovered that this was a big gap, not just for Maria, but for other kids in the family. To fill this need, they offered to come and tutor them once a week.

They started with one family, but word spread quickly. Before they knew it, the Hollandsworths had started a community center.

Jim and Melinda Hollandsworth.

Before long, more and more kids started showing up to get help with homework each week, and Jim and Melinda found themselves scrambling to keep up with the demand. They enlisted friends as volunteer tutors, and the kids kept coming.

After a few months, the mobile park property manager said he had a vacant mobile home that had been the site of a drug-related shooting. He asked the Hollandsworths if they wanted to use the home for their after-school programs.

That was the first time that Jim and Melinda thought that they could do more than just help a few kids with homework. But they also knew that if they took this opportunity, they had to be all in.

Early on, a 6th grader named Sophia had asked them, "When are you gonna leave?" These kids were used to people coming into their neighborhood, doing good things, and then never coming back. The Hollandsworths knew that in order to make a real difference, they needed to be there long term, to build relationships with these kids and their families.

So, they made the commitment and renovated the mobile home into a community center.

When a volunteer asked to work full-time and other mobile parks asked for them to launch programs, The Path Project was born.

Word began to spread not only among the families in this mobile park, but among mobile park owners as well. They saw how the Hollandsworths' after-school program was helping kids stay in school and on a healthy path, and they wanted the same for their communities.

First group of Path Project kids who graduated high school.

One volunteer said she wanted to make the tutoring work her full-time job. But Jim and Melinda, a pastor and a teacher, knew practically nothing about fundraising or starting a nonprofit. They had to learn as they went.

Today, The Path Project is a full-fledged 501c3 nonprofit with a staff of 24 people.

Jim left his job as a pastor in 2013 to focus full time on the project, which has expanded to eight mobile park neighborhoods in Georgia and Tennessee. The Path Project is privately funded through individuals, churches, and businesses, and they still utilize plenty of volunteers. They also partner directly with local schools and with organizations like Stand Together Foundation, whose goal is to help grassroots social entrepreneurs break the cycle of poverty. Stand Together Foundation is helping The Path Project with scaling their work in order to reach as many children and communities as possible with their relationship-based model.

The project has grown, but the foundation of its success remains the same: Getting to know your neighbors.

The Path Project is a prime example of what can happen when people get to know their neighbors and seek meaningful solutions to community problems together.

The project's recent stats speak to its success. According to The Path Project's 2018 annual report, 100% of the 4th and 5th graders in the project's first community are on track academically (using United Way metrics on grades, behavior, and attendance). Between 2011 and 2016, graduation rates jumped from 35% to 88%, and around 90% of students in that mobile park are currently on track to graduate—an improvement of 100% in the past four years.

Infographic courtesy of Path Project

The Hollandsworths will tell you that the road to The Path Project's success hasn't always been easy. Melinda says there were a lot of small, scary steps they had to take along the way. But the key was to show up, keep showing up, and focus on building relationships.

"I think it's important for us all to be good neighbors," says Jim. "And we do that by showing up, meeting new people, and asking questions. And if something comes out of that, then great. But at the very least, you have the opportunity to be a good neighbor. I think that's what we're all supposed to be."

Stand Together Foundation invests in solving the biggest problems facing our nation today in order to unleash the potential in every individual, regardless of their zip code. By supporting social entrepreneurs like Jim and Melinda who're close to social issues like poverty and academic challenges, new solutions are developed that are working. You can get involved and find a transformative org near you at Standtogetheragainstpoverty.org.

To find out which of these organizations supports your values, take this quiz here and let Stand Together Foundation do the searching for you.

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Chewy
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Chewy spotlights the photographers who help pets get adopted

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When a pet is admitted to a shelter it can be a traumatizing experience. Many are afraid of their new surroundings and are far from comfortable showing off their unique personalities. The problem is that's when many of them have their photos taken to appear in online searches.

Chewy, the pet retailer who has dedicated themselves to supporting shelters and rescues throughout the country, recognized the important work of a couple in Tampa, FL who have been taking professional photos of shelter pets to help get them adopted.

"If it's a photo of a scared animal, most people, subconsciously or even consciously, are going to skip over it," pet photographer Adam Goldberg says. "They can't visualize that dog in their home."

Adam realized the importance of quality shelter photos while working as a social media specialist for the Humane Society of Broward County in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

"The photos were taken top-down so you couldn't see the size of the pet, and the flash would create these red eyes," he recalls. "Sometimes [volunteers] would shoot the photos through the chain-link fences."

That's why Adam and his wife, Mary, have spent much of their free time over the past five years photographing over 1,200 shelter animals to show off their unique personalities to potential adoptive families. The Goldbergs' wonderful work was recently profiled by Chewy in the video above entitled, "A Day in the Life of a Shelter Pet Photographer."

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Four big takeaways from National Geographic's new 'Fauci' documentary

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National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci

When I first saw the preview of National Geographic's documentary about Anthony Fauci, I was confused. My assumption was that the documentary was made to profile his role in the COVID-19 pandemic response as that's how he became a household name. How did the filmmakers know they would need to get footage of Fauci at the very beginning of the pandemic, when no one knew yet what it would become?

The answer is: They didn't. This film was never intended to be about this pandemic at all. The profile of Anthony Fauci was planned by award-winning filmmakers John Hoffman and Janet Tobias in 2018 and they began filming in the fall of 2019, several months before anyone had even heard of SARS-CoV-2. The filmmakers originally planned to highlight Fauci as a lesser-known public servant, focusing primarily on his work throughout the AIDS pandemic.

What they ended up with is parallel stories of Fauci's AIDS work and Fauci's COVID response, and their "lesser-known" subject becoming a superstar during the making of the film. In fact, the press release for the film included the following, which is an unusual disclaimer but one the filmmakers felt necessary in the current climate: "Dr. Fauci had no creative control over the film. He was not paid for his participation, nor does he have any financial interest in the film's release."

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Tory Burch
Tory Burch Empowered Women
Empowered Women

Military spouses often choose their spouse's career over their own. This organization is changing that.

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When Sue Hoppin was in college, she met the man she was going to marry. "I was attending the University of Denver, and he was at the Air Force Academy," she says. "My dad had also attended the University of Denver and warned me not to date those flyboys from the Springs."

"He didn't say anything about marrying one of them," she says. And so began her life as a military spouse.

The life brings some real advantages, like opportunities to live abroad — her family got to live all around the US, Japan, and Germany — but it also comes with some downsides, like having to put your spouse's career over your own goals.

"Though we choose to marry someone in the military, we had career goals before we got married, and those didn't just disappear."

Career aspirations become more difficult to achieve, and progress comes with lots of starts and stops. After experiencing these unique challenges firsthand, Sue founded an organization to help other military spouses in similar situations.

Sue had gotten a degree in international relations because she wanted to pursue a career in diplomacy, but for fourteen years she wasn't able to make any headway — not until they moved back to the DC area. "Eighteen months later, many rejections later, it became apparent that this was going to be more challenging than I could ever imagine," she says.

Eighteen months is halfway through a typical assignment, and by then, most spouses are looking for their next assignment. "If I couldn't find a job in my own 'hometown' with multiple degrees and a great network, this didn't bode well for other military spouses," she says.

She's not wrong. Military spouses spend most of their lives moving with their partners, which means they're often far from family and other support networks. When they do find a job, they often make less than their civilian counterparts — and they're more likely to experience underemployment or unemployment. In fact, on some deployments, spouses are not even allowed to work.

Before the pandemic, military spouse unemployment was 22%. Since the pandemic, it's expected to rise to 35%.

Sue eventually found a job working at a military-focused nonprofit, and it helped her get the experience she needed to create her own dedicated military spouse program. She wrote a book and started saving up enough money to start the National Military Spouse Network (NMSN), which she founded in 2010 as the first organization of its kind.

"I founded the NMSN to help professional military spouses develop flexible careers they could perform from any location."

"Over the years, the program has expanded to include a free digital magazine, professional development events, drafting annual White Papers and organizing national and local advocacy to address the issues of most concern to the professional military spouse community," she says.

Not only was NMSN's mission important to Sue on a personal level she also saw it as part of something bigger than herself.

"Gone are the days when families can thrive on one salary. Like everyone else, most military families rely on two salaries to make ends meet. If a military spouse wants or needs to work, they should be able to," she says.

"When less than one percent of our population serves in the military," she continues, "we need to be able to not only recruit the best and the brightest but also retain them."

"We lose out as a nation when service members leave the force because their spouse is unable to find employment. We see it as a national security issue."

"The NMSN team has worked tirelessly to jumpstart the discussion and keep the challenges affecting military spouses top of mind. We have elevated the conversation to Congress and the White House," she continues. "I'm so proud of the fact that corporations, the government, and the general public are increasingly interested in the issues affecting military spouses and recognizing the employment roadblocks they unfairly have faced."

"We have collectively made other people care, and in doing so, we elevated the issues of military spouse unemployment to a national and global level," she adds. "In the process, we've also empowered military spouses to advocate for themselves and our community so that military spouse employment issues can continue to remain at the forefront."

Not only has NMSN become a sought-after leader in the military spouse employment space, but Sue has also seen the career she dreamed of materializing for herself. She was recently invited to participate in the public re-launch of Joining Forces, a White House initiative supporting military and veteran families, with First Lady Dr. Jill Biden.

She has also had two of her recommendations for practical solutions introduced into legislation just this year. She was the first in the Air Force community to show leadership the power of social media to reach both their airmen and their military families.

That is why Sue is one of Tory Burch's "Empowered Women" this year. The $5,000 donation will be going to The Madeira School, a school that Sue herself attended when she was in high school because, she says, "the lessons I learned there as a student pretty much set the tone for my personal and professional life. It's so meaningful to know that the donation will go towards making a Madeira education more accessible to those who may not otherwise be able to afford it and providing them with a life-changing opportunity."

Most military children will move one to three times during high school so having a continuous four-year experience at one high school can be an important gift. After traveling for much of her formative years, Sue attended Madeira and found herself "in an environment that fostered confidence and empowerment. As young women, we were expected to have a voice and advocate not just for ourselves, but for those around us."

To learn more about Tory Burch and Upworthy's Empowered Women program visit https://www.toryburch.com/empoweredwomen/. Nominate an inspiring woman in your community today!

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