Tt post may 3, 2016 - b

The grant partially funds the project. More money is needed to finish it.

Excerpts from an Apr 30, 2016 Toledo Blade story

Feed Lucas County Children and the Cherry Street Mission plan Monday to announce a $1 million state grant to build a kitchen for both organizations.

The 24-hour kitchen will be at the Life Revitalization Center, the former Macomber Vocational High School building, 1501 Monroe St.

Carty Finkbeiner, Feed Lucas County Children board chairman, said state Sen. Randy Gardner (R., Bowling Green) and Sen. Edna Brown (D., Toledo) were instrumental in securing the grant money.

The kitchen will cost $2.6 million, Mr. Finkbeiner said. The balance of the money is being raised through donations, he said.

“We are confident that we will be able to raise the rest of the money, and we have already received some donations,” Mr. Finkbeiner said.

About $1.5 million has been spent the past two years for repairs of the former high school building near downtown, which was built during the 1930s. Workers repaired the roof, parking lot, and heating system.

More than half of the gymnasium’s hardwood floor was replaced, restrooms throughout the building were updated.

Late last year, Cherry Street Mission Ministries received $100,000 for practical job training and aid for the area’s homeless from the Owens Corning Foundation.

The kitchen will offer about 1.5 million meals a year upon its completion in June, which is a huge increase from an annual rate of 500,000 meals the shelter is able to provide now.

My wife and I assist with an organization that caters to residents in the Old South End. The org tries to satisfy many objectives, but two include: the immediate need of food for the day or the week for those who need it, and the long-term goal of ensuring that the kids visiting today will not be needing the assistance when they become adults.

One program helps parents to help their kids to be ready to learn when they start kindergarten or first grade. Getting books into the homes and having the parents read to their kids for 15 minutes a day is a big help.

Apparently, children from low-income neighborhoods enter kindergarten 60-percent behind their middle-class counterparts in learning development. I heard that TPS has said that the number is 80-percent in the Old South End.

Some of what the org does will sound elementary, or the tasks being taught may be things that we take for granted, but it's a vastly different world for some Toledo households that is hard to explain.

Unfortunately, a level of poverty exists within Toledo that would shock many people. The living conditions, the physical and mental health issues, education levels, substance abuse or addiction problems, etc.

The stories about what some destitute people will do for drug money are so horrific that I don't believe them. But if true, such experiences would contribute to lifelong psychological scars for some people.

Obviously, ignoring this doesn't make it go away. Ideas are welcomed.

Also in Toledo ... May 1, 2016 Toledo Blade editorial titled A scandal that should shame our city

Infant mortality is not a topic that many Toledoans debate ...

... we should all know that neighborhoods a short walk from the [Mud Hens] ballpark have infant mortality rates higher than the rates of infant deaths in Syria, Jordan, and the Gaza strip; or in Albania, China, and Mexico.

Toledo’s 43604 ZIP code — which encompasses all of downtown, areas just west of I-75 from downtown, and the North Toledo neighborhoods from downtown to I-280 — had an infant mortality rate of 16.5 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2014, the last year complete numbers are available.

That compares with an infant mortality rate for Lucas County in 2014 of 9.3 and an overall rate for Ohio of 6.8. But when race is factored in, the disparities are even greater. The white infant mortality rate in 2014 for Lucas County was 7.05. The black infant mortality rate in the county the same year was almost double that at 13.52.

The entrenched poverty leading to infant mortality is also yet another result of the toll of the Great Recession and the dismantling of industrial America. So called “legacy cities,” like Toledo typically have large concentrations of poor, mostly minority, neighborhoods.

There have been warning signs, which local officials have largely ignored. They have thrown up their hands at the enormity of the problem.

As far back as 2011, a Brookings Institution study ranked Toledo as No. 1 among the country’s largest metro areas for the growth in the concentration of poor people living in the poorest neighborhoods. The study showed there were more than 46,000 people living in 21 neighborhoods in the city with poverty rates of 40 percent or higher.

Another unmistakable sign of a growing problem was the growth of hunger in Toledo. From 2000 to 2010 the number of Toledoans receiving food stamps rose from 51,000 to 96,000.

So what is the remedy? We don’t know yet. First, the public needs to know about this. Infant mortality is not an Albanian or Syrian problem. It is a Toledo problem. Next, we need solid social research.