Delta Circles, founded by Patricia Ashanti in 2009, is a small nonprofit in Helena with a big mission: fighting poverty in the Delta by helping people help themselves.
“We’ve got a lot of challenges here, but there’s a lot of hope that things are going to change and get better,” Ashanti said.
With funding and support from the Arkansas Community Foundation and the Clinton School of Public Service, Delta Circles runs classes — one called “Getting Ahead” and another called “Financial Literacy” — to help people develop skills to tackle problems they may face as they try to lift themselves out of poverty. “They decide where they want to go, and we start to help them create those pathways,” Ashanti said. “In some cases it could be trying to get into college. In other cases it could be trying to locate jobs, start their own business, buy their own home.”
Delta Circles educates people on what Ashanti calls the “hidden rules” of the workforce and the middle class, and connects folks to resources for job training, education and entrepreneurship. It also gives people in the community, going through the same struggle, a forum to share their experiences and knowledge. “We allow the individuals that are affected by poverty the most to be a part of the solution,” Ashanti said. “We recognize and respect the leadership ability that they already have and they’re already using in their lives.”
Ashanti, a Helena native with a background in accounting, was inspired by the work of Dr. Ruby Payne, an expert in generational poverty best known for her book “A Framework for Understanding Poverty” and accompanying workshops.
“The information just hit a chord with me,” Ashanti said. “It brought the whole conversation of poverty to the individual level. Previously I had been looking at it on a community level. I saw that I wanted to work with individuals and families. With the struggles I have had in my life financially, I knew that with the information I was learning myself, others could benefit from that same information.”
The workshops are free and open to anyone in the community; facilitators are typically previous graduates of the classes. The “Getting Ahead” class meets once a week for 12 weeks and the six-month “Financial Literacy” class meets once a month. Delta Circles typically offers four classes over the course of a year. The program has had 160 graduates since 2009.
In addition to the classes, Delta Circles helped create a task force, partnering with the state Department of Workforce, Phillips Community College and Southern Bancorp, to help place people in jobs and ensure that they had the skills to succeed. Southern Bancorp was also a partner in the “Financial Literacy” class, offering graduates an individual development account — if people attend all six classes and save $600 over that time period, Southern Bancorp matches that by $2,000, funds that can be used for education, the purchase of a home, or starting or developing a business. Delta Circles is also hosting literacy programs and is developing a program to send literacy tutors to help employees on the job.
“We’re working with individuals who are interested in moving forward in their lives,” Ashanti said. “People who are ready to make changes. We’re not trying to convince anybody that they need to try and get off food stamps or whatever. They have to make that decision for themselves. But if they have dreams and they have things they want, then our job is to support them. We are seeing a change in people’s lives. They start to dream again.”
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