Rearranging resources to reduce poverty relapse

Project Elf and lowering poverty relapse

This is a project that was created to test a concept I had written about rearranging resources to help ease poverty relapse. That test case was 17 years ago and I (and all my friends I can talk into it) have never stopped creating, expanding, and supporting the coming off welfare community in a variety of resourceful ways.

Its critical to state Elf is a project, not a non-profit. Every year we invite people in our community to do things out of kindness, and not out of the desire to have a tax write off. We have no staff, no budget, no outside funding. We DO have a system of volunteers that gather and deliver 18,000 pounds of donations to families each year out of ONE tiny storage unit. That's 9 tons that stay out of landfills, for a little while anyway.

The project bio is this: if we rearrange everyday resources everyone wins.

The premise of thought is that there is another option to ending relapsing poverty struggles by addressing the one basic fact. Most relapses could have been repaired with under $100 at the right time. Getting people to work, supporting someone when they call in sick and miss a day of pay, having food shelf donations delivered, and focusing on everyday needs that support a family so that the every day budget has less stress.

For 17 years it has been a very simple ASK, from a small community: Will you choose to take the BEST things that you have as "extra" and hand those items to someone who needs them.

PLUS it has to be a gift that is given freely and without need of a reward

Energetically that is a very different gift than one where someone requires that they use it for tax purposes. To give a gift. Our group truly engages because they find it is more fun, it serves a higher good that they can trust, and it just feels better..

Exchanging resources isn't actually a charity deal, it should be part of natural energetic exchange. Once I have finished with something, I should be called to move the energy to someone else who would realize the benefit of the energy of the item.

So many people miss THAT EXACT BEST part of what they consider donating to charity. The best part is locking in a new beginning for something that had an ending. Its like a re-booting of everything that was OFF and getting it all back to ON.

?What I have found after 17 years of this work, is that rearranging resources is a nimble art. Sometimes that is asking the community to send in all the EXTRA food they overbought, that is still in date, and just drop it off on our 3 hour drop off time one Saturday a month.

Sometimes its me getting pissed-off that the homeless shelter just stopped handing out bar soap because someone STOLE some from the supply cabinet. (People I assure you, no one is STEALING SOAP for a resale value... ) So we gathered up 500 bars of soap, gave it to one homeless resident that we knew, and she started handing it out on the steps. (she was selling single cigarettes for $1 each at the same time but who cares) THREE FREE FULL SIZE SOAP FOR EVERYONE, even kids.

Other times it is giving a young woman parking money to get her kids to the doctor, or giving a Walgreens $100 gift card to pick up 4 lice kits, and laundry supplies because bugs on your kids AND in your house, totally sucks! Gross stuff needs to be addressed immediately, so I may also need someone to drive the gift card to her house, or pick up all the stuff and a pizza too. Because 4 kids with lice in an apartment, will trifle with any single mothers sanity.

Project Elf does not have to add in the exchange of religion, we don't have a form that you need to fill out, you don't have to be "poor enough". You just have to be someone who can complete a positive exchange cycle that energetically and physically works pretty awesome.

You should hang with us sometime,

Join ushttps://www.facebook.com/projectelfmn