Latest / Neighbourly: Real Stories of Care and Community / Understanding Poverty | Shelaine Strom

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Understanding Poverty | Shelaine Strom · Neighbourly: Real Stories of Care and Community

• 0:32
  Welcome to the Journey with Care podcast, and I'm so glad that you are
• 0:35
  here with us today. In studio today, we have Shalane
• 0:39
  Strom. Welcome, Shailene. Thank you. It's great to be
• 0:42
  here. And I'm actually sitting in your kitchen, and
• 0:46
  we are having tea and some delicious snacks here, and
• 0:50
  it's so good to be here in BC, in Abbotsford, BC.
• 0:54
  Shailene, you are the national lead
• 0:59
  National education lead. National educational lead, with
• 1:02
  Food For the Hungry Canada. You're not a stranger to Care Impact, but can
• 1:06
  you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? Well, I really
• 1:10
  appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation with you, Wendy.
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  It's quite comical to me when I think back to how you and I
• 1:17
  actually got connected. Right. I had the opportunity
• 1:21
  to start something called ending povertytogether.org
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  that is a library of resources
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  contributed by to by many collaborators across the country.
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  And it was through that that I actually met you,
• 1:37
  and that's where we began this journey of partnering and collaborating
• 1:41
  together men quite a few years ago now. Yeah. I was thinking back.
• 1:45
  I think everything good happens over a cup of coffee. I'm pretty sure it was
• 1:48
  one of those Starbucks in Winnipeg. You were in Winnipeg Uh-huh. And one of
• 1:52
  many to come. Yes. We have connected
• 1:55
  very easily after because we have a lot to talk about. We do. A lot
• 1:59
  of things in common. Tell us a little bit about Food For the
• 2:03
  Hungry, and and maybe we can discuss why we have
• 2:06
  chosen to partner with you in such a way. For sure. So Food For the
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  Hungry is an international Christian development
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  organization, and the Canada
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  side of FH works in 7 different countries around the
• 2:21
  world. And our goal is really to see
• 2:25
  communities graduate out of poverty. And so
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  what we do is we connect with a community
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  that is really struggling and probably stuck,
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  especially in material lack. And
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  when they decide that they want to walk with us, we
• 2:43
  create this MOU of understanding together
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  that we're gonna do this 10 year roughly 10 year journey. And in
• 2:51
  that time, the staff that, we have in
• 2:55
  the country are 98% of them are people
• 2:58
  who were born in that country. So we're not
• 3:02
  bringing people in from North America. We are looking at,
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  neighbors working with neighbors, which I think is such a beautiful part of
• 3:10
  the way we do work. And I think that's one of the places where we
• 3:13
  connect with you. Yeah. I think that's where we did connect because we're
• 3:17
  like, we have this need as well. We have this need here in
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  Canada for neighbors connecting with neighbors. Yes. Maybe it looks
• 3:24
  different in some of your other developing countries,
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  but we in Canada have some work to do, and I think that's
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  what got me interested. I attended some of your workshops as
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  well. Yes. And that's one of the ways that we are involved in
• 3:38
  Canada is through our educational workshops. We
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  have one called Wendi poverty together, and that's the one
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  that I think was our first point of kind of connection
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  where we realized that we are actually doing something
• 3:54
  that would be really beneficial for you and for your organization.
• 3:58
  And so now that ending poverty together workshop is part of your core
• 4:02
  training for people. And and it's one of those things that any church
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  that is, working with us, let's say, on the
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  CarePortal, and they are getting introduced into community needs
• 4:13
  through through the care portal requests that come through, we always suggest and
• 4:16
  recommend that they get involved and attend one of your workshops. Because
• 4:20
  I remember, I'm gonna sit myself back into that seat Wendi I
• 4:24
  attended my very first workshop with you, and
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  I sat there and I said, oh my goodness. I took years I did
• 4:31
  my master's in global studies and and studying some of these concepts that
• 4:35
  were familiar to me, but the way you distilled it into something
• 4:39
  that could be taken within a day was fascinating. And
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  I knew that there was something here that I wouldn't expect
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  our churches to all go get their masters or go overseas to learn
• 4:50
  all the things, but there were some key concepts that could be
• 4:54
  understood, could be discussed around the table. It's very
• 4:58
  interactive. It's very practical. And I
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  realized we need to talk because what is happening
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  out there and some of the best practices, we need to learn how to be
• 5:09
  good neighbors here in Canada. And I think one of the things that
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  you may be referring to is really the root
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  of what we do in the workshop is address the root
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  cause of poverty. And a lot of times Wendi people come to a
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  workshop, when they just look at poverty
• 5:26
  within their city, it seems to be out there.
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  Right. It's the homeless encampment that you drive by
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  on your way to work every day. It's something
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  that feels quite other to a lot of people within the church.
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  The soup kitchens or the child welfare or or those other things
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  that Exactly. Really inaccessible, it feels. Yeah. And so
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  one of the things that we walk people through in the workshop
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  is the Genesis account of
• 5:56
  how God created us to be in 4 key relationships.
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  He wanted us and wants us to have relationship with Him,
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  with ourselves, with others, and with the created
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  world. And when sin entered in, those
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  four relationships were broken, and that's when poverty
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  began. So when you really sit with that for a bit, you realize
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  that's all of us. Yeah. Every single one of us
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  is impoverished. We are all in need of reconciliation and
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  healing through Jesus. So that is a a
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  ground leveling moment for a lot of people. And then you have other people,
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  and, actually, I think it was the one that you attended who say, okay. Wait
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  a minute. But now that that makes everybody impoverished,
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  how how do we talk about this? How does that make sense? And one
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  of the things that I think is helpful is to recognize we are
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  all impoverished, but we are not all
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  equally vulnerable Right. At a given moment.
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  And we have poverty in different ways and in and in
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  different, you know, different places. And for some of us, our poverty
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  is hidden. It's more of a spiritual poverty or more of
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  this desire to live independently, and so we don't have
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  those deep connected community relationships.
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  Whereas other people, the poverty is more material and
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  perhaps more obvious then. Right. So that I
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  think is really profound for people. The other thing that I think is
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  so beautiful that comes out of that is this idea of
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  mutual transformation. When I am walking along
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  some side someone, I am not only
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  being the helper kind of in a traditional maybe way that we
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  use that word, but I am also the learner.
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  If I have this understanding of poverty, then hopefully it creates
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  a humility within me that says I
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  have need and lack like everybody else, so I
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  wanna be open to learn from the people that I'm walking with. Yeah.
• 7:59
  No. That's so good. And that's something that we're finding too at Care
• 8:03
  Impact and why this education is so important as we invite
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  churches into responding to needs in the community that
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  social workers or frontline ministries are are putting onto the
• 8:14
  portal. What we're finding I love that families are
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  being reunified. I love that these teens are aging out and now
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  have a community that is looking out for them and finding a bed and just
• 8:24
  saying, hey. Text me anytime. So those relationships are being
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  restored. But one of the things that most beautiful things for us, because
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  we're focused on the church, as are you, what I love is
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  seeing the transformation happening within the church. So
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  often we think out there, how can we make a difference? But we need
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  God is so equally concerned about the transformation within our
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  own hearts as a community that in Canada, I think we have a lot of
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  work to do within the church. Do we know the person across the pew, and
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  are we feeling vulnerable enough to say my day is not going well, can you
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  pray for me, or can you watch my kids? And we just have so much
• 9:00
  to learn from our international brothers and sisters. Absolutely. I have the
• 9:04
  privilege of traveling to the communities that we work with, and I
• 9:08
  was just in Guatemala most recently. And to
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  see the way that these community members have come together, and
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  particularly during COVID, where in North America, we
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  were experiencing incidents of loneliness
• 9:22
  and isolation and mental health issues at unprecedented
• 9:26
  levels. There it's not that there weren't issues happening in
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  Guatemala as well, but we also saw these beautiful
• 9:34
  expressions of neighbors taking care of neighbors and communities coming
• 9:38
  together, and that's for us, it was this this wonderful moment
• 9:42
  of, hey. This is really working. Yeah. The work that has been
• 9:46
  happening is really working because these people are caring
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  and loving one another. No. That's beautiful. Prior to to
• 9:53
  starting Care Impact, I was working in settlement community
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  development, with The Salvation Army, and we had a
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  lot of newcomer refugees, immigrants coming in, a lot of
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  families from northern communities, remote communities from the indigenous
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  population coming into this neighborhood, very densely populated,
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  a lot of high social needs. However, I observed under
• 10:16
  the shade of a tree in the summertime and saw perfect strangers sharing
• 10:20
  chai tea under the shade. One thing I I I upload my
• 10:23
  my my staff and say, don't tell anyone that this isn't Canadian
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  because they are actually helping transform our neighborhood. Absolutely. Bring
• 10:31
  them on. And so if any of our listeners are hearing that and
• 10:34
  they're saying, oh, we should help our immigrant population, the refugees that
• 10:38
  are coming, or or indigenous that are feeling displaced in an urban
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  setting, It's not just that, yes, they do need neighbors. There, there's a lot of
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  isolation. But lean in because the church needs them because they
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  actually have the secret sauce to community. Yes. And
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  besides, it tastes delicious. All the food and the the the the
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  teas and the the coffees and the the laughter, even it it
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  even spans language barriers when you're connected.
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  Mhmm. Absolutely. And I think right now, something that sits deep
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  within me, and I think you and I have had conversations about
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  this, but something that sits deep within me is
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  the need for breaking that relational poverty within
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  the church and within churches working together
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  with child welfare agencies, other organizations beyond the
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  check writing, beyond the shoebox drives, but
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  actually in relationship, could we wrap around these
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  the most vulnerable together? And would they actually
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  transform our best practices too? That we're not the
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  rescuer. We are really walking in community.
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  But what's your experience, working with the churches here
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  in Canada? I recently was on the
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  island in Victoria, and this church has
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  walked with a community, Rio Azul, in Guatemala
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  for many, many years. And what
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  I got to experience in meeting them for the first time recently
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  is the sense of community that they have, the
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  sense of connection that they have with these people who live
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  very far away from them and what they have learned
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  from the community members in Guatemala and
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  how important it is for them as a church
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  that they have this outward focus
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  and that it isn't just about what's happening within their own
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  congregation, but they have this beautiful partnership
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  that happens. And I actually believe that the healthiest
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  churches are the ones who, yes, engage internationally
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  and also engage locally. Yes. So that there is
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  this healthy perspective of it's, it's not
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  us and them. It's all of us together. Yes. And that we
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  are, like we said before, we're all equally
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  impoverished in this. And so how do we get connected with people
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  who can actually really walk with us in our poverty? And they
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  maybe don't look like the person you're accustomed to sitting with in
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  the church. So this is just a it's a curious
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  time with church, having just come through COVID, and, you know, we've
• 13:20
  talked about this. I don't know. Churches is it's a
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  challenging kind of a a place to be right now for
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  leadership, I think, because we've gone through this
• 13:31
  online season and trying to figure out how to get reconnected
• 13:35
  again. And so what I love about the
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  work that FH does and the work that you guys do
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  is that we really genuinely care about the health and the well-being of
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  the church. Yeah. One thing's for certain, and we we gush over
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  this. We both we love the church. Our organizations love the
• 13:53
  church. Yes. And, actually, our ministry is the church in
• 13:57
  many ways because organizations throughout history, they
• 14:01
  all come and go. And there's need for them, there's, there's value in them,
• 14:05
  there's expertise and wisdom in them, but the church is here to
• 14:08
  stay. And the church is called to to reach out to those
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  around them that you can't have enough organizations doing all of
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  that, what the church was intended to be. Mhmm. So what got you
• 14:19
  into FH, Food For the Hungry? Like, what
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  what drew you in? What's your personal why? I
• 14:27
  actually worked for about 17 or 18 years in the career
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  development industry or sector, And
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  what's fascinating in hindsight is how much overlap there really
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  is between international development that I'm doing now
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  and the career development because there's a lot of principles that are
• 14:45
  very similar. So I did that, and then I ended up having a health
• 14:49
  crisis. When I was 14, I was hit in the jaw with
• 14:53
  a baseball, and it broke my jaw and damaged it quite
• 14:57
  severely. And so I had surgery at the time, which was
• 15:01
  a miraculous intervention and gave me a lot of
• 15:04
  years of relative health. And then
• 15:08
  in 2012, I started to have some serious
• 15:11
  issues, and I ended up having to quit work altogether and be on a a
• 15:15
  long term disability because I'm a talker. And
• 15:19
  if you don't have your jaw, it's pretty tricky to talk. So
• 15:23
  God gave me a different avenue for my voice during those 4 years that
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  I was off, and I wrote. And I read a lot, and
• 15:30
  I was quiet a lot. And I remember standing by the kitchen sink
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  one day, and I had just finished reading a book about a young woman
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  who was working in Africa, and she was bringing
• 15:41
  young children into her home and just all of the challenges
• 15:45
  and and difficulties that she was facing. And here I was standing
• 15:49
  in my kitchen just watching water pour out of the
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  tap and just crying and saying, god,
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  why do I have so much? And it was a
• 15:59
  really physically painful set of circumstances that
• 16:03
  I was living in, and I was in a lot of physical pain, but I
• 16:07
  was also very aware that I'm very privileged.
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  And it wasn't like God spoke audibly, but there was just this
• 16:15
  very strong impression at that time that it
• 16:18
  was just about timing. Just be patient. So fast
• 16:22
  forward, I have surgery. I have total joint replacement.
• 16:26
  I have this unbelievable long but great
• 16:29
  recovery, and it's time to go back to work, and the place that I worked
• 16:33
  before doesn't even exist anymore. Wow. So what am I gonna do now?
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  And the beautiful way that god moved in
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  showing me that I had 4 different
• 16:43
  things that I could bring to a career.
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  And then I get this call from an old friend of mine
• 16:51
  saying, somebody over at FH would love to have some training,
• 16:55
  and so would you go and chat with them? And I get there, and I'm
• 16:58
  thinking I'm just gonna do a short contract, and it turns out I'm actually in
• 17:02
  a job interview. And those four things that God
• 17:05
  very specifically showed me that I could bring to a career or to a
• 17:09
  job were the exact four things that
• 17:13
  they were looking for for somebody to come in. And I
• 17:17
  I left that, and I said to my husband, I I can't say no to
• 17:20
  this. This is so clearly god ordained.
• 17:24
  But I didn't know a lot. I didn't think I knew a lot at that
• 17:27
  point about international development. And the more I've
• 17:31
  gotten I've been there six and a half years now, and the more I've gotten
• 17:33
  into it, the more I realize all of those years
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  prior have been preparation for this. Wow.
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  Because my heart is for people
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  to grow and to be in right relationship with
• 17:48
  God and to be in those right relationships and to have their own
• 17:51
  sense of dignity and value and worth and to recognize
• 17:55
  that they can solve their problems. And that's one of the things I love
• 17:59
  about FH is we are an asset based approach. So
• 18:02
  we don't go into communities looking for what's wrong. We go in looking for
• 18:06
  what's right. Who are the people who sometimes we call them
• 18:10
  positive deviance, people who aren't doing exactly what everybody
• 18:13
  else is doing, and it's actually working. And so looking at how can we
• 18:17
  empower them? How can we help people envision their
• 18:21
  own future when they've felt like it's been
• 18:24
  hopeless? And that's really what I love.
• 18:28
  That's what God's called me to do my whole life, and so now I get
• 18:31
  to do it in this fantastic environment. Yeah. And and
• 18:35
  you do a really good job in educating. And those of you that
• 18:38
  have listened to or been part of some of her workshops, you
• 18:42
  will know that. But what I appreciate about you is you bring your whole self
• 18:46
  into it, your whole story. It's not just here's some cognitive learning, here's
• 18:50
  some slides, and let's let's do a workshop. You really live it
• 18:53
  out, and I think it's come through that personal experience of yours,
• 18:57
  bringing you it's not just a job to you, it's part of who
• 19:01
  you are. Well, and, you know, when we talk about the transformation
• 19:05
  that happens, there are things that I teach in
• 19:08
  those workshops that every time I go through
• 19:12
  it, I realize, oh, yeah. You know what? These are really great
• 19:16
  principles that I need to make sure I'm applying in my own life, in my
• 19:20
  own family, with my adult children, because
• 19:23
  they're things that just work. And teaching is makes you the best
• 19:27
  student. Right? You're always learning. Yeah. Well, and then because
• 19:31
  the workshops in particular are interactive, people bring their
• 19:35
  own experiences and lives to them. And so there's this great
• 19:38
  opportunity to learn from one another. Yeah. And so I get to be
• 19:42
  the student as well as the facilitator in these discussions. And I
• 19:46
  think that's why I've also connected well with you because with Care
• 19:49
  Impact, one of our main things is connecting with community and looking
• 19:53
  for those assets within, not looking at how is the system broken,
• 19:57
  but what are the the gifts and abilities and the strengths and the organizations
• 20:01
  and the the people that we believe everyone and and so do you.
• 20:05
  We we believe everyone has intrinsic value and is gifted and
• 20:08
  and called, into different lanes. But being
• 20:12
  able to connect with all of that and be able to work together,
• 20:16
  just that whole idea of, like, we are better together Yes. And
• 20:20
  we need to work together. Well, and then I think it
• 20:23
  it actually is more fiscally responsible.
• 20:27
  Absolutely. Why why duplicate? Exactly. We're not reinventing the
• 20:31
  wheel, and and we're letting people who are experts in a
• 20:34
  particular area be experts, and we're not
• 20:38
  threatened by that. We're saying, let's invite you in and let's do
• 20:42
  this together, and you be great at what you do
• 20:45
  and and help us because that's not our lane, but
• 20:49
  let's not try to be everything. And that's how we have a memorandum
• 20:53
  of understanding. Right? And and that's just a formality, but in
• 20:57
  practicality, we don't have to be the experts and the trainers of poverty.
• 21:01
  We can work with you and vice versa. We can work in the child welfare
• 21:04
  area, and we've been able to even co do some
• 21:08
  stuff together, and it it's been a lot of fun to, to work with you.
• 21:12
  Well, I just wanna thank you so much for coming on the podcast,
• 21:16
  letting me come to into your home. My pleasure. Anytime. It is fun. It's
• 21:19
  a treat, I'm not gonna lie, from doing Zoom that we could actually be
• 21:23
  together and drink tea together. Any final word or
• 21:27
  encouragement to to our audience that you would like to share? I
• 21:30
  would just say, again, thank you for all the ways that we have
• 21:34
  been able to collaborate. And my encouragement, the the hope I
• 21:38
  think that we have is that good work is happening. There
• 21:42
  are great things happening in a world where we often hear such
• 21:45
  discouraging and really frightening kinds of messages to
• 21:49
  know that there is hope, and that as we pull
• 21:52
  together and as we partner and invest
• 21:56
  in people through these deep relationships, that
• 22:00
  change is happening. And I would just say if you're
• 22:03
  interested in the workshops that we do offer, you can start
• 22:07
  by checking out fh canada.org/resources,
• 22:11
  and we always have any workshops that are listed or that
• 22:14
  will be listed there, anything that we're doing in the future, so that's a great
• 22:18
  place to start. And you can also check out careimpact.ca for the
• 22:21
  times that we'll be featuring you, and sometimes we promote your other
• 22:25
  workshops as well on our website, and, we would
• 22:29
  love to see all of you participate in one of
• 22:32
  these workshops in the future. And I can guarantee you, it
• 22:36
  it's gonna be a time well spent and not so much
• 22:40
  that you have to work for any organization, but simply how to be a
• 22:44
  good neighbor. If you wanna love across the street, if you wanna
• 22:47
  love the person in your community that you just are having a hard
• 22:51
  time connecting with or you're not sure how to get there, this
• 22:55
  workshop is for you. Thank you so much, Shailene, for being on the
• 22:58
  podcast. Oh, thank you for the opportunity, Wendy. Thanks for
• 23:02
  listening to the Journey with CarePortal where paths connect over real life
• 23:06
  stories and honest conversations. We hope you continue to join
• 23:10
  us on this journey of faith, reconciliation, and loving our
• 23:13
  neighbor. Journey with Care is an initiative of Care Impact, a
• 23:17
  Canadian charity dedicated to connecting and equipping the whole church
• 23:20
  across Canada to effectively journey in community with children and
• 23:24
  families in hard places. Learn how Care Impact is transforming the
• 23:28
  way churches engage child welfare with our CarePortal technology and
• 23:31
  academy training. To support this podcast or learn more about
• 23:35
  us, go to CareImpact ca or follow us in the show notes.
• 23:39
  We're so glad you are part of this journey with us as we journey with
• 23:43
  care even in the messy. Until next
• 23:51
  time.