It’s Tuesday evening, and Ome Dafalla and her three children sit down to dinner in the basement of Capitol Hill Lutheran Church. It’s her youngest son’s sixth birthday, and one of the volunteers has baked a cake for the occasion.

For the past couple of hours, the single mother has been setting some goals for her family’s future with her “allies.” Working through Circles of Support, a new mentoring and support network program for low-income families, Dafalla has more reasons to hope tomorrow will be better.

“With Circles of Support, you get more friends, people who can help you,” said Dafalla, who emigrated from Ethiopia four years ago. Her husband’s job brought the family from Atlanta to Des Moines two years ago, but the two have since separated, leaving her in and out of low-paying jobs and public assistance programs. After about four months in the program, she recently found a job with Wesley Acres to do laundry and food services work.

Circles of Support is among the human services programs the Greater Des Moines Partnership has proposed to expand as one of its Project Destiny initiatives. The goal is to reach 200 families during 2004 through a network of “allies” – two or three mentors and a caseworker assigned to each family.

“We see this as an excellent opportunity to get business to the table in human services issues,” said Tim Shanahan, a senior planner with the Human Services Planning Alliance, a consortium of public, private and non-profit entities that serves as a focal point for human services planning for Polk County.

The program is based on a similar initiative launched about eight years ago in Story County.

“It’s almost a critical time, because there have been so many funding cutbacks in human services,” said Shanahan, who was among the task force members who developed the Partnership’s human service initiatives. “It’s getting harder and harder for agencies to supply what families need in the community.

“We also have a fairly large untapped workforce in our community that needs additional help in becoming employable,” he said. “That’s one thing the Partnership can help in, to reach that untapped workforce so they can become a viable part of our workforce.”  

So far, 15 families have been assigned a circle of allies since August 2003. Those families were identified through the Des Moines Independent Community School District’s Success Program at Longfellow and Wallace elementary schools.

“We’ve got more families than we have allies,” said Lois Smidt, a technical assistance provider who trains the allies.

Making connections in the community is the key to the program, said volunteer Mark Haverland.

“It’s just like all of us; we have friends and neighbors we rely on,” said Haverland, who is also director of the Iowa Department of Elder Affairs. About four months ago he volunteered through his church to be an ally to Dafalla and her children.

“A lot of folks like Ome have trouble finding those connections,” he said. “The whole strategy here is that now Ome knows somebody who knows somebody.”

Haverland helps Dafalla with financial planning, from living within a budget to setting up a bank account, paying bills and saving to buy a reliable car. His wife is also on the team, helping Dafalla to connect with more people in the community. Another ally works with the family on school issues, and a paid caseworker helps coordinate the public assistance programs she’s on.

“This is really going to make the community a better place,” Haverland said. “I think the business community is smart to invest in the community in a way that makes us all better off. And the business community has just the kind of connections these folks need.”

GOOD RETURN ON INVESTMENT

The Greater Des Moines Partnership has tentatively budgeted $374,250 to fund the first year of Circles of Support, which is one of three human services initiatives it has proposed through its Project Destiny Human Services Task Force.

The task force report estimated that the Circles of Support program could reach 200 area families in its first year, at a cost per participant of about $1,800. For that investment, the task force estimated that the earnings of those families would collectively increase by $1.5 million in one year, or an average of about $7,500 per family. Additionally, it’s assumed that the program would save more than $650,000 in the first year by enabling families to go off of food stamps and housing assistance programs.

If the program is expanded communitywide, the task force estimated it could reach 2,500 families, for a total benefit in increased earnings and welfare savings of more than $26 million.

For more information on becoming a Circles of Support volunteer ally, call Margaret Jensen Connet, Success Program manager for the Des Moines Independent Community School District, at 242-8117.