Andrea Campbell

Leadership & the Community

Guth

18 April 2019

Informational Interview

Kelly Roe is a senior at Evangel University with a part time job with The Northwest Project as
the Director of Youth Programming. The Northwest Project is a partner of the Drew Lewis
Foundation, an organization that focuses on the betterment of urban communities through an asset-
based approach. An asset-based approach works to revitalize the infrastructure of a community
and renew the pride in a community. The Northwest Project is also partnered with Missouri State
University and Drury University. The goal of the partnership is to help families overcome the
obstacles which have kept them living in poverty and to sustain success after emerging from those
circumstances. Kelly is an important part of this mission as she plans the lessons for the children
twice a week following the community dinners. These lessons are an integral part of achieving the
core mission of the organization and breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty.

1) What is the most challenging part of your job?

Working with at-risk students means there are lots of needs to meet and that
deserve to be met equally. However, the structure of this organization means that
I only meet with the students once a week in a large group. There is never time for
individual learning to ensure that each student’s needs mentally and emotionally
are being met. The lack of regularity also makes it difficult to identify those needs
in the first place.

2) What is the most rewarding part of your job?

The ah-ha moments. It doesn’t happen often due to the nontraditional classroom
setting that we are in and how young the students are, but I’ll be teaching a lesson
and I will just see them start to understand. We did gratitude jars a few weeks ago
where I printed out pictures of jars and had them draw things that they were
thankful for. They drew everything from their pets to their friends and family to
the sun. But every single student actively participated, and I knew it was a
concept they were going to take home with them.

3) How does your job impact the Springfield community?

One of the biggest reasons for my position existing within this organization is to
help address and combat intergenerational poverty, mental illness, and just bad
habits due to a lack of support. We want to break the cycle of their parents. That
requires an early start on introducing concepts like self-motivation, growth
 mindset, and goal setting. We provide that type of structure for parents who are
living below the poverty line and want to do better for themselves and their
children. But my job is to help the next generation get the support they need to
start off on the right foot.

4) What are some of the challenges you and this organization face?
There are a variety of challenges that we face. One is the actual implementation of
the tools we are teaching those individuals that we serve. It takes a long time to
move out of poverty and it is difficult for us to know if the lessons we are
teaching are being used in everyday life. Because we cannot step in. That is
another major challenge. When a family we serve is struggling, we struggle with
them. We see people who have been sober for two years slip back into old
practices, but because of the boundaries that exist within our positions, there isn’t
much we can do beyond our job titles.

5) How will your job change/what do you hope to see here in the next 10 years?
Something that we have just recently been discussing and that is a personal goal
here of mine is establishing more individual, intrapersonal type programming. We
want to have individual family meetings to goal set things in the home and to help
personalize the curriculum to the needs of each family that we serve. We also
want to provide more educational prep in terms of parenting as most of our
curriculum currently centers around financial and career prep. With this program
expansion, we would also like to add more youth development in terms of follow-
up and one on one interactions. Our biggest goal is to increase the number of
people we can serve and create an effective method for helping these individuals
not only move out of poverty but maintain a place of good.

The Springfield community has a large population of individuals living below the poverty
line. This organization is directly working to help those individuals build a life out of poverty
which they can sustain. Kelly herself grew up below the poverty line and knows the importance
of supporting those children in these homes. Educating children at an early age and helping them
form healthy habits and attitudes is an essential part of breaking this cycle of poverty. The work
Kelly and this organization does is a vital and extremely impactful part of the Springfield
community.