"Witnessing Welfare: Resilient Voices From The Front" honors the lives of women who face extraordinary challenges in the economic shift of our country. Current welfare reforms limit opportunity as recipients struggle to keep their families and their educational paths intact. On this web site, California State University Monterey Bay and Monterey Peninsula College focus on the lived experiences of women facing welfare cut-off, share their stories of strength and resiliency.
The Creative Writing and Social Action Program at California State University Monterey Bay and the CARE/EOPS Program at Monterey Peninsula College are once again joining together, two years after our original collaboration about how welfare reform is affecting the lives of community college students (see Education As Emanicpation: Women On Welfare Speak Out). This time, the collaboration includes CSUMB’s Service Learning Institute and CSUMB’s Computer Science and Technology Program, with the production of a web page.
The web site consists of four sections: the first section is a book titled, Education As Emancipation, produced two years ago that witnesses the onset of welfare reform; the second section, titled, Resilient Voices, witnesses where some of the women and children in the book are today, and that introduces several new women and their children; the third section, Resources and Information, includes CalWORKS regulations, myths and facts about welfare, links to related readings, related web sites, what other states are doing; and the final section is a WelfareQuilt, under construction.
With the web site, we pose this question: How, in the midst of such economic wealth in the U. S., can we as a country deny individuals the right to self-sufficiency through education?
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Frances Payne Adler, CSUMB
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Carol Lasquade, MPC