Well, first, let me just thank Michelle for her leadership.

She serves as board chair of Capitol Area United Way.

And those of you who are familiar with any nonprofit organization, board chair has an important role and they set the tone for certainly my work and the work of the organization.

And she has done a just remarkable job in that role.

So thank you for those kind words.

And then to Carl, welcome.

Welcome to the man.

I didn't know him before, but I'm proud to say that they're a Urich is a funded partner of capital.

We are United Way.

So how fitting is that?

I got to tell you, it feels awkward being up here in front of so many people without a trumpet in my hand, but I couldn't think of a better place to be and a better reason to be here.

And that is to talk about the Alice population in our community.

And I thought long and hard about how I wanted to share this this message with you in this information about this segment of our population.

But I hope you get something out of this, because this is really, I think, a better understanding of Alice and the challenges of the Alice population in our community is the key to, I think, addressing many of the problems and the ills that you've heard over the last few weeks.

I mean, you heard Murphy, Paul talk about crime.

You heard Mike Berto talk about from Blue Cross, talk about Medicaid and what's what lies ahead for those almost million people that are going to be finding themselves kicked off of the Medicaid ranks.

So we're when we understand Alice and the challenges that Alice face faces, then I think we as a community can start making better decisions and better public policy to address those, and then we can mobilize the support that's needed to help these families.

So here goes and introduction towns.

But, you know, let me do this before I get started.

You heard the introduction.

I told everybody that's affiliated with United Way that I was going to do this, so I need to get it out of the way so I don't have to worry about it later.

I want to first start with board members.

I want every board member to stand up of capital.

We are United Way, every board member to stand up and remain standing.

Okay.

I want every cabinet member and every committee member to stand up.

All right?

I want my staff to stand up.

I want anyone who's ever volunteered for United Way to stand up.

And there are a bunch of you out there.

All right.

I want our corporate partners to stand up.

And some of them are already standing.

But if you're not in any of those groups.

All right, now I want any donor or member of an affinity group that is not already standing to stand up.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, this is the army of folks who help us do what we do for this community, in this temperance community that we serve.

So everything I'm talking about today, they are already squarely behind it.

Okay.

So thank you all.

Thank you for what you do.

All right.

I'm glad I got that out of the way.

All right, let's talk about Alice.

So, Alice, first of all, is an acronym that stands for Asset Limited Income Constrained but employed.

Now, I know that's a mouthful, but sure, it stands for those folks that are above the poverty line, but don't earn enough on a regular basis to cover their monthly livable expenses.

I've heard it referred to as working poor, but I think Alice is a more accurate description of what and who they are.

Now, above the poverty line means that they don't qualify for many of the programs that the government offers.

They're not eligible.

They make too much.

You've heard the term.

They make too much to qualify for those kinds of benefits that are there as a safety net for communities and you're going to hear that that is something that that will be a common theme among the Alice populations that we are talking about.

Now, before I get into the Alice information, I need to also qualify that the report or the data that I'll be sharing today is from the 2018 is based on 2018 data but comes from the 2020 Report.

Now we are on the brink of another report that's going to be released in May, the last week of May of 2023.

That will include everything up to the year 2020.

So it's a little bit old information, but I think you get the gist of Alice in the magnitude of this population in our community.

So mark your date, mark your calendars for the new release report, release date.

I think it is May 25th in the state of Louisiana.

And then you can also receive or find additional information at United for Alice dot org.

United for Alice Fordham.

Okay.

So let's talk about Alice.

So what does the household survival budget look like?

Well, household survival budget means housing chair, child childcare, food, transportation, health care technology, basic technology, a phone, a phone plan, and then some miscellaneous expenses that may include taxes and things like that.

So no frills, no vacations, no birthday celebrations, no, you know, it's just basic living expenses.

And this data looks at the cost of all of those items by region, by parish, and even sometimes by municipalities.

So it's very rich.

It's very deep data that gives you a snapshot of what it costs to have to maintain a basic household, whether you're single, whether you're married, or whether you're a senior citizen or whether you're a family of four.

It looks at those those different categories.

The other common denominator is that because folks are working there in low wage jobs, low wage jobs, and that's a theme you're going to hear throughout this presentation as well.

So when we take a look at Louisiana, we're looking at the the I guess the ten or the greenish color represents those folks that are above the Alice threshold, meaning that they earn more than the basic living expenses.

We're at 49% in 2018.

That is almost half of our population in the state of Louisiana.

The blue looks at poverty, and one of the things we the state of shows is that poverty has remained pretty steady, pretty level throughout from 2007 all the way through 2018.

What has grown has been the pot, the segment of the population that is above poverty but earns less than the level of the household living budget.

So I want you to keep that in mind.

Now.

So in total here, 51% of our total households in this Alice report were below the threshold.

All right.

On this graph, you see two lines.

The dark blue line is the the line for poverty.

And it shows from 2007 all the way through 2018, it's been relatively flat right at about 300,000 households or family individuals.

But if you look at that light blue line, that's the Alice line.

Those are the folks who found themselves earning less than the household budget that I told you about.

That's where the pain comes from.

That's where families and communities that are feeling squeezed.

That's that's where that's coming from.

Now, let's look at what the demographics look like.

And this is a breakdown by parish in our ten parish area.

And again, the total for our ten parish area of Alice is 51% or 49% I'm sorry, 49% for a ten parish area for East Baton Rouge Parish, it's 52% that are below the Alice threshold.

All right.

So let's look at some of the demographics.

And each each circle represents 30,000 lives.

And when you look at the different groups there, you see that there is no group that is not impacted or not affected by Alice.

The blue represents those families that are living below the Alice threshold.

The gold represent those that are living above the Alice threshold.

So you can see that there are some groups that have a real serious challenge.

A high percentage of those individuals, those folks are living below the Alice threshold.

This is a different look at it.

It breaks down by different different groups.

And again, we're talking about individuals that are in these different classes or categories.

And, you know, when you look at the those that are under the age of 25, that's 70.

And I need my glasses.

Yeah, there we go.

79%.

79% of the population, 25 under the age of 25 or below.

Alice.

That's a that's a big number.

And then you look at some of the others.

Single head of household.

Families with children.

And it just.

It says male.

But I think it's single, both male and female.

That's 60%.

So we're talking about pockets of our population that cut across all demographics, and they are more likely to be living below the Alice threshold than than.

There's another graph I want to share with you.

This is the basic budget.

Those items that I shared with you earlier, an interesting thing.

This was done in 2018, but there are some lines that show where the different levels were As for stimulus payments and things like that, those payments were intended to be a big help and in some cases they were, but they still did not cover the income of those low end wage earners who lost a lot of income during the pandemic.

So there's some some real damage that was done to those households during the the pandemic.

And I think as we look forward to the next report that comes out, we will see some of that impact.

And that's the Federal Cares Act stimulus check amounts that that were paid by each group.

All right.

This is a slide that really got my attention.

This slide looks at the the level of different job categories, whether it was growth or whether it was just basic job or whether it was remain flat from 2007 to 2018.

And and what you're looking at shows that in the orange or the green or gold line, it shows that high wage jobs, those are jobs where the income of the wage earner was above the analyst threshold.

Those jobs actually decreased over that period.

The blue line represents the jobs that were low wage jobs.

Those jobs actually increased over that period of time.

And then the jobs where with when you have to wage earners in a household that that are in the median group, they pretty much remain flat.

So those jobs remain flat over that period of time.

But it requires two wage earners to make ends meet.

Now, what this tells me is that you could have a situation where unemployment is very low because there were jobs created during this period.

But you still have Alice, you still have folks that are living in Alice that are feeling the pain of not being able to meet monthly expenses.

So with all of that information, what does having sufficiency look like?

Well, when folks are able to earn enough, then they are in safe, affordable housing, quality child care and education, quality health care.

They are able to save.

They are able to have reliable technology to deal with a lot of the changes and and remote work situations and things like that.

They have adequate food and then they have reliable transportation.

That's what having sufficient income can do for a family.

Now, I mentioned that there was additional information available.

This is the the site that you can go to United for.

Alice talk.

And I encourage you to go and take a look at it because there's a wonderful information there.

Now, how do we help?

Because I think that's the logical question with with what we are experiencing, what we have in our community, What does it look like in our region, in our parish region and more importantly, how can we help or who we help and then how can we help?

So this is a snapshot again of the 2018 data found in the 2020 report that shows what our ten parish area looks like and what the Alice population looks like in each parish.

And you can see the it ranges from kind of a low of 38% in that ascension and then as high as 59% in Saint Helena.

Think about that.

Almost six out of ten individuals are below the threshold in Saint Helena.

So how do we help?

Well, I can tell you that since I've been here 2016, we have made the Alice population our North Star.

And what I mean by that, we have baked it into everything that we do.

We look at it through the lens of How does this help Alice?

So there are a couple of categories that we work with.

One is programs and initiatives.

And these are things that programs and initiatives that initiatives are things that we do.

We found that there's a gap in community and we actually provide these services.

And the one that comes to mind, top of the list is our 211.

If you don't take anything else away from this speech today, it's I want you to take the fact that two on one, those three numbers can serve as a connector of needs to resources.

Three simple numbers that anyone can call 24 hours a day, seven days a week during disasters any time, and speak to a live person who can then give them information about available resources in their community by zip code.

And they're able to not only give them what they ask for, but through a series of questions, they're able to give them additional information about do you need, you know, if you need rental assistance, do you.

Do you need food support?

Do you need to know where the nearest pantry is?

Do you need to know additional information that can help you?

That's why we are so tied to that.

So those three numbers and you can call for information.

This shows some of the categories.

I actually ask our person who handles that, what are the top five categories that people call for?

Number one is housing.

Number two, utility assistance.

Number three, food.

Meals.

Number four, income support and assistance.

And number five, health care.

I don't think there are any surprises in that list when you think about some of the challenges that the population faces.

We've had on average as many as 40,000 calls in a year to that to one one from our region.

So it is a heavily used resource that really provides support for our communities.

All right.

Another area is last year, last January, we brought in a coalition of banks that are all involved in providing support to the unbanked and to those who are in need of financial literacy, training and what have you.

And we brought that in under our United Way umbrella.

And we now have a financial coach on our staff.

We have we do literacy training throughout the communities.

We provide wraparound services to those folks who receive volunteer income tax assistance and support from us.

This is an opportunity for us to fill the gap of the knowledge gap that exist with some of the folks who are in the population.

The Nflx character Playbook is a program that we've been doing for four years.

It's offered free of charge to schools.

We have it in over 30 schools, and these schools are able to receive instruction from an online platform that helps kids with how not to bully, how to resolve conflict, how to how to improve your just basic ability to get along with others.

It's a very well done program, and we've done it.

Like I said since I've been here the last six years, and at the end of the year we do something big for the kids that complete the program.

All right.

Single care now coming from a health care background.

This was one that was very important to me.

And this is a card, a simple card that, in fact, we left some on your table.

They're available for you there.

But all you have to do is log in, log on to single care website and put in a medication that you may be on.

And that information and you plug in your your zip code and it'll give you the the cost per by pharmacy that offers that that resource.

So wonderful tool to use.

And the other thing I learned is that and this is an actual example of how, you know of one of the demands.

I don't know which Lipitor.

Okay.

40 milligrams.

So the price ranges from 499.

And then you have another one, 1478, all the way up to $20 and or what?

Really, $46.

So think about that.

Think about the the the variation there.

And if you have a high deductible plan, that's a great way to to save some dollars.

We make those available everywhere we go.

All right.

Now, one of our biggies is Super tax Day.

And I am so proud to say that we have done this for a number of years now, well over ten years.

And this is the one day event is a program that Entergy sponsors.

But we did 241 tax returns at Super Tax Day.

That's in one day at the main library.

And throughout the course of a year, for example, the last three years, in 2021, we did over 6500 tax returns and those returns brought back to the community over $9 million in refunds.

Now, think about the impact of that and one at the essence of the the tax preparation and it's all professionally done.

But the essence of it is that it helps those individuals that are low to moderate, moderate income to it helps them qualify for the earned income tax credit.

And that is one of the major ways that they can get ahead.

Now, I have a couple of stories I'll share with you, and it just blows your way at the impact that this can have.

So one is a recent one.

There was a gentleman who had an elderly gentleman who had adopted two kids from a relationship that he that a personal relationship that he had.

And this was a situation where he had been over three years that he had adopted these kids.

He filed his taxes without claiming these kids in prior years.

So when he came to us, we identified that he was eligible to go back and file claiming these kids.

He also realized or they also realized that he didn't wasn't able to receive his stimulus payments because of his situation.

He didn't have the right information in there.

He got a $27,000 refund as a result of going to one of our free tax preparers.

And that was a major change for him.

That made a huge difference.

Another example, there's a young lady.

Her name is Jordan, and she worked at one of the restaurants here in town.

And she was complaining that she had to have her taxes prepared.

And the person that the table she you know, this was at the mindset of the person that she was complaining to said, hey, I'm a volunteer with volunteer your income tax assistance.

Why don't you have your taxes prepared?

Let us do that for you.

She made an appointment called 211 to make an appointment.

Made an appointment, got her taxes done.

She qualified for the Earned Income Tax credit, received a 20 $500 refund because she qualified for the earned income tax credit.

And that was enough for her to pay off debt.

That was enough for her to purchase a bed for one of her kids.

And then she had talked about going back to school.

So she was able to go back to school.

Now, you think about 6500 claims, the stories that can come out of that.

Last year, it was just under 6000 claims.

This year through February.

We were right at 3000 claims.

And we still have a week to go before the end of tax season.

Very impactful.

That's the kind of program that really makes a difference.

All right.

You got it.

We feed.

That's another service that we started providing during the pandemic.

And you know, what can I say?

That's that's a lot.

United for Vets is another program that we do.

But let me get to the grants that we offer.

We offer a quite a portfolio of grants.

We have three year funding to the tune of $1.5 million annually for three years, 2 to 21 nonprofits, basic needs grants for one year.

We have other grants as well.

And I know I'm getting running low on time, but here's the part I wanted to get to.

So how can you help?

Because you see what we are doing.

How can you help?

How can you get in on it?

How can you join the army of people that are already doing this work?

And I think there are a couple of things that I want to share with you.

And that is, number one, if you're individuals, by all means, give advocate and donate.

It's pretty simple.

Give advocate on behalf of the A-list population and then volunteer.

Now for businesses.

I gave a little more thought to this and I think there's more that businesses can do.

First, you need to recognize and support A-list employees in your workforce.

Recognize that wages and benefits play a key role in that.

Number two, support programs that support Alice.

Like you heard about some of the programs I talked about volunteer income tax assistance.

Number three, invest in workforce development training for Alice.

That's one of the main ways that people can move from where they are to a a job that pays them adequately.

Another is advocate for sound public policy, which supports Alice.

And then the last is support organizations like United Way that have a proven track record of supporting Alice.

Now you have some goodies at your table.

2 to 5 years.

It's our annual day of giving.

May 4th, please, please go to that website.

2 to 5 gives dot org.

Find one of the nonprofits that you like or several and support them on this day of giving.

It's a big deal and the nonprofit community really needs that support.

Second, we have several events that we have coming up for United Way.

Check them out.

You have a QR code that will direct you to our website that has that information.

It has been an honor to be here today to share this information.

I hope you got something out of it and I will stick around for questions.

I know we have a hard stop at one, but I will be around.

I'll speak to every single person that wants to talk to me or ask me about the work of United Way and how you can get involved in supporting it.

Thank you for this moment, and I look forward to seeing you.