Getting Ahead in a Just-Gettin’-By World - Training for Facilitators

"People in Poverty need an accurate perception of how poverty impacts them and an understanding of economic realities as a starting point both for reasoning and for developing plans for transition.....The community must provide services,support, and meaningful opportunities over the long term. In partnership with people from middle class and wealth,individuals in poverty can solve community and systemic problems that contribute to poverty."

Getting Ahead in a Just-Gettin’-By World is a workbook for adults in poverty that shows them how to use the hidden rules of class to build up financial, emotional, social, and other resources. Understanding the hidden rules of the middle class and wealth, and choosing to use them, can open doors to such resources as new relationships and new jobs, among others.

Working in a group with a facilitator, adults who use this workbook will develop a series of mental models to examine their own lives and create new future stories. In 15-20 sessions the participants explore the impact that poverty has had on them, investigate economic realities, complete a self-assessment of their own resources, make plans to build their own resources, and develop a mental model of community prosperity.

Getting Ahead does not provide answers to the participants on how to establish economic stability, nor does it make the argument for change; instead, motivation, insight, and plans come from the participants themselves. Upon completing Getting Ahead participants will have a plan of their own based on the knowledge acquired through the co-investigative process and expressed in new mental models.

Facilitator training includes the following topics: 
philosophy,

• theory
• motivation 
• long-term support
• mental models 
• content and process
• and practice sessions 

One or two days (on-site facilitator training)
Pre requisite
Bridges Out of Poverty (Day One)  OR
A Framework for Understanding Poverty (Day One) workshop