After 20 years working in workforce development, community empowerment, and economic development across domestic and international contexts, one thing became clear: we're all facing variations of the same problem while putting our hopes in organizations that are accustomed to solving the old problems.
In every corner of seemingly every community, wages are low, good jobs are brutally difficult to find, and the cost of living climbs. Most workforce programs connect people to jobs paying $16 per hour. Average rent requires $29 per hour. That $13 gap is why the same families cycle through social services year after year, despite their motivation and hard work.
Meanwhile, nonprofits that were set up decades ago to support some households from falling through the cracks with food assistance or youth programming are suddenly asked to solve the effects of extreme wealth inequality and power disparity. Churches that run food and clothing drives must respond to family homelessness and financial requests from adults with full time jobs who are months behind on rent. Elected officials are incentivized to respond to upset constituents who are distracted from these problems by increasingly AI and bot driven outrage content on social media and entertainment news. As we say in the community development world, who is going to stop pulling drowning people out of the water and reach up to turn off the faucet?
A living wage job that is productive and dignified is critical to achieve or sustain any other peacemaking or community effort. No good jobs means more crime, more hunger, less education, poor mental health, poor physical health, and an unlivable community even for the wealthier residents. Too few people do this work with excellence. Academics theorize, elected officials pay lip service, social media creates fictitious villains to blame, and many nonprofits write grants saying they will do this in order to fund legacy programs that do not.
I've trained hundreds of practitioners who want to do this work well. Some focus on advocacy and policy to grow the number of living wage opportunities. Some work directly in community and economic development partnering with employers and entrepreneurs. Some recommit to the work they were already doing with a clearer understanding of how they fit into the picture. They are empathetic pragmatists, building relationships, making common sense connections between stakeholders, and prepared to implement high impact projects when the opportunity and resources present themselves.
For years, I struggled with the fact that as much as I love teaching graduate students, I also see people who don't yet have the credentials or resources to pursue graduate school but see these same challenges in their communities and want to address them. After realizing that what my career had become was economic peacemaking and publishing a book on the topic, I committed to making that training available to anyone eager to get into this fight for thriving and peaceful communities.
Welcome to the Center for Economic Peacemaking.
Make peace. Fight greediocy.