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Syracuse's High Poverty Rate: How Can Businesses Help?

Chris Bolt/WAER News

  How do you bridge the gap between poverty and gainful employment so people can support their family? …and what is businesses responsibility.  Business, education and community service organizations took on the topic at Centerstate C-E-O Wednesday.  V-P of Economic Inclusion Dominick Robinson says poverty issues are often thought of as problems for the government and non-profits to solve.  However, he says investment in the companies and the employees can help change economic disparity.

“We heard today about businesses that are making strategic investments in neighborhoods where they’ll be close to people who are living in low-income conditions and therefor provide access t hose people who can get jobs in those companies more easily.  It has to start with economic growth, specifically in our urban core.”

Credit Chris Bolt/WAER News
A commercial building on Syracuse's West Side. Some say growing businesses close to low-income areas can make it easier for residents to get to work.

  Robinson says there are some very specific things business can offer to pave the way to employment…and out of poverty.

“We heard about the really critical need for child care support for employees who have a hard time managing the challenges of raising and family and going to work.  How do we provide a better system to provide child care in ways that actually benefit employers and create a more productive work environment and allow them to retain their employees more effectively.”

Education is also a part of the discussion.  University College at Syracuse University Dean Bea Gonzalez suggests companies network with educational institutions to help lift people out of poverty.

“Once you get them, the next thing is higher education, because then you’re really changing the life-cycle of that entire family forever.”

Credit Chris Bolt/WAER News
A boarded-up building on Syracuse's West Side

  Additional jobs can be offered to those in communities dealing with poverty.  The Department of Labor’s Juanita Perez-Williams encourages businesses that are doing so, to ask their colleagues to visit and get involved.

“And see the real poverty that’s here.  As a business, that perhaps is even hiring people from these communities and not even having an interest. Come down here because your colleagues tell you, ‘we’re doing it and you should do it too’.”

Last year, Syracuse was flagged in a study as having some of the highest-in-the-nation poverty among Blacks and Hispanics in certain areas of the city.  

Chris Bolt, Ed.D. has proudly been covering the Central New York community and mentoring students for more than 30 years. His career in public media started as a student volunteer, then as a reporter/producer. He has been the news director for WAER since 1995. Dedicated to keeping local news coverage alive, Chris also has a passion for education, having trained, mentored and provided a platform for growth to more than a thousand students. Career highlights include having work appear on NPR, CBS, ABC and other news networks, winning numerous local and state journalism awards.
John Smith has been waking up WAER listeners for a long time as our Local Co-Host of Morning Edition with timely news and information, working alongside student Sportscasters from the Newhouse School.