Wonderful Appleseed friends,
 
At New Mexico Appleseed, when we think about the most vulnerable children, we always think if we could've just reached them a little bit earlier. Outside of prenatal interventions, getting to that baby and parents right when the child is born is gold. There is no better time to help two generations at once. And, there is one proven intervention that works. Money.

Of all of the anti-poverty interventions studied all over the globe, the one that stands out as the most durable and most impactful is also the most obvious. People without access to money to cover basic needs from home repair to diapers to food and gas have little chance of ever moving forward by any definition. The assumption that giving people money will mean they spend it poorly or lose their will to work has been debunked a thousand times over in a thousand settings. When people are given cash, they make effective choices with how to spend that money.

While cash transfers are not silver bullets, they can remove basic barriers to entry, if you will, to academic success, good health and wellbeing, and social and economic mobility. If you have no money, these things are far out of reach and the pursuit becomes a fool's errand.

New Mexico Appleseed recently completed four successful small pilots giving $500 a month to inadequately housed children who attended school, tutoring and support sessions. Building on that work, we wanted to go bigger and get better. We wanted to help earlier and do it in partnership with the beneficiaries.
 
New Mexico Appleseed received a $300,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) to design a cash transfer model benefitting under-resourced substance-exposed babies with young parents. For this grant, Appleseed hopes to achieve four outcomes:
  • Co-create with parents of substance-exposed babies a cash transfer program that supports their personal goals and benchmarks for themselves and their children.
  • Memorialize the co-creation design process as a replicable model for national distribution. In other words, we hope to articulate a model for working with beneficiaries to design their own interventions.
  • Design an evaluation to understand whether participants met their own goals and whether the cash support decreased negative government interactions (CYFD, arrests, etc.) and/or increased positive government interactions (increased attendance for school for older children, access to primary care, etc.).
  • Advocate for guaranteed basic income as a less expensive and more effective anti-poverty tool
 
The grant does not fund the cash transfer intervention itself, just the research and design process. This research and design phase will take about 18 months and then we will seek funding for the cash transfer. In the meantime, we will continue to push for cash transfers at the legislative level—but this is part of the evidence-building that we need to do to get that done.
 
Thank you as always,
 
Jenny and the board and staff of New Mexico Appleseed
 
P.S. We know that child poverty—though complex—can be solved. We need more help and most of all we need you. Your contributions make our work happen. Thank you!
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), founded in 1930 as an independent, private foundation by breakfast cereal innovator and entrepreneur Will Keith Kellogg, is among the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States. Guided by the belief that all children should have an equal opportunity to thrive, WKKF works with communities to create conditions for vulnerable children so they can realize their full potential in school, work and life.
 
The Kellogg Foundation is based in Battle Creek, Michigan, and works throughout the United States and internationally, as well as with sovereign tribes. Special attention is paid to priority places where there are high concentrations of poverty and where children face significant barriers to success. WKKF priority places in the U.S. are in Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico and New Orleans; and internationally, are in Mexico and Haiti. For more information, visit www.wkkf.org.
Meghan Mead is the Director of Law and Policy at New Mexico Appleseed and has worked on child and family homelessness for over 4 years. She has done extensive policy and legal research and advocacy around the McKinney-Vento Act and issues related to child and family homelessness, including compliance with federal and state laws and best practices, eviction, and supportive housing for child-welfare involved families. She has been heavily involved in developing guidance for school districts on how to support students experiencing homelessness during the pandemic and is part of Appleseed’s team that developed and implemented pilots to provide academic support and financial stipends to students experiencing homelessness. She also works on the Family Success lab project, providing policy and legal analysis, and technical assistance to state partners.

Prior to her work at New Mexico Appleseed, Meghan was in private law practice, primarily focusing on health care and nonprofit tax and governance. Meghan received her undergraduate degree magna cum laude in history and economics from Mount Holyoke College and is a graduate of Stanford Law School.

Q: Who or what has shaped who you are? 
My family and friends, of course. And I’ve always loved to read. Books have opened whole worlds and lives and inspired my desire to work in social justice.
 
Q: Who inspires you? 
People who get up each day, get dressed and go out into the world trying to do good.
 
Q: What's your superpower? 
My work ethic and sense of humor. And I can fly.
 
Q: Are you working on anything exciting outside of work? 
Quite a bit! I have three kids that keep me busy and I also picked up the piano again after a 20-year hiatus. I've also been spending a ton of time on our gardens.
 
Q:  If you didn’t have to work, why would you come into the office? 
I love the intellectual engagement that comes with our work and the fact that we are tackling huge problems and driving solutions. And knowing and hoping that it makes the lives of other people a bit better.
 
Q: What are some of the highlights of working at Appleseed? 
We have a great team at Appleseed and I adore my bright and witty co-workers. I also love how adaptable Appleseed is and how we aren’t afraid to jump into a new issue area, get up to speed, and be part of the team coming up with solutions.

The relentless struggle to make ends meet has serious effects on the brain.

Rutger Bergman contends that poverty is not a lack of character – it’s a lack of cash: "The great thing about money is that people can use it to buy things they need instead of things that self-appointed experts think they need. Just imagine how many brilliant scientists and entrepreneurs and writers, like George Orwell, are now withering away in scarcity. Imagine how much energy and talent we would unleash if we got rid of poverty once and for all. I believe that a basic income would work like venture capital for the people. And we can't afford not to do it, because poverty is hugely expensive. Just look at the cost of child poverty in the US, for example. It's estimated at 500 billion dollars each year, in terms of higher health care spending, higher dropout rates, and more crime. Now, this is an incredible waste of human potential."

A growing body of research shows that poverty can impair a person’s cognitive functioning

Have you ever taken on additional shifts at work for some extra cash and then failed an exam because you didn’t study enough? Bought a phone for $0 to save money then only to end up stuck in a three-year contract? Signed up for a high-interest credit card without really reading the fine print because it meant immediate access to funds?

This may be how are brains are wired to operate, according to researchers who have been studying the cognitive mechanisms behind scarcity. They say when we’re under financial stress and focused on solving a problem related to money, our brains tend to tune out other information and hinder our ability to do unrelated tasks. And it may explain why some people who are living in poverty can’t seem to get themselves out of it.

We are in a pivotal moment in modern history—one which has documented parallels with the Great Depression. Now, as then, we are living through a moment of crisis that also affords us an opportunity to reshape the inequalities we have come to take for granted. Whereas the policies dealing with the Great Depression helped reduce income inequality in the United States and Europe, today’s policies in response to the coronavirus need to go a step further, recognizing the existence—and the interconnectedness—of various types of inequalities.