When Nikita Anderson first joined Public Allies Cincinnati, she was looking for a job. With four children to support — and unemployed at the time — she was searching for opportunities. Then she met two ‘allies’ serving with the Urban League (an organization that promotes economic empowerment and self-sufficiency through a variety of programming) in her home neighborhood of Avondale. And so, Anderson decided to take the dive herself.
She says the intensive, 10-month stint with Public Allies wasn’t easy. Housed under the umbrella of AmeriCorps — a national volunteer-based program that engages adults in public service to help meet the needs of the surrounding community — Public Allies is an offshoot with a specific mission to “create a just and equitable society” and diverse, sustainable leadership.
Launched in 1992 in Milwaukee, Public Allies has since spread to 25 cities throughout the country, including Chicago, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Los Angeles and unique sites like Eagle Rock, a residential alternative high school in Colorado. They place allies in apprenticeships at local nonprofits from September to June. Though it’s not what you’d call a high-paying gig, allies are paid a total of $15,000 — including healthcare benefits — plus an educational reward of $5,920 post-service. In that, the program hopes to support allies not only in the time they’re with PA, but after they leave, too.
David Weaver founded Cincinnati’s Public Allies branch in 1998. He hoped to create a venue for young adults to continue professional development in nonprofit work. Weaver, who subsequently founded another education-focused group called Youth at the Center and recently moved to Florida, says that the participants of Public Allies often go on to be the voices of their community.
“I think that is one of the things that is very intentional about Public Allies specifically is that we look for people from those communities — who serve those communities, who have lived and benefited from those communities — to actually sharpen their skills and be able to provide services for other people,” he says. “Having community context is huge. Having an understanding of how various organizations have served and benefitted but also detracted and failed communities is hugely important.”
Anderson is one of hundreds of people in Cincinnati who has gone through the local Public Allies program, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. She says she got far more out of it than she first anticipated.
“I’m not just a better employee, I’m a better mother, sister and friend,” she says. “Like, I was not expecting that level of emotions. The transformation I made personally was totally not expected. It was not in any of the job descriptions. I really became empowered to do more and get involved in my community.”
PA placed Anderson at Working in Neighborhoods as an employment barrier specialist. There, she connected clients to employment opportunities and helped them enroll in classes that built soft skills or more concrete abilities like IT training.
Located in South Cumminsville, WIN aims to bring more stability to the lives of low- and moderate-income residents of Hamilton County through several initiatives, like housing, leadership development and employment. Building relationships was key to the work, Anderson says.
At WIN, she worked to remove the same barriers to employment that she’s faced in her own life while living in poverty. Through working with others, she gained more insight on her own situation.
“People are poor. It doesn’t matter what color they are. We’re poor and a lot more people are poorer than we think,” she says with a sigh. “So, just taking that into consideration when it comes to uniting people — even in my personal life — like, ‘We are both broke. We should be working together, not fighting each other. We’re living the same issue.’ ”
In addition to being placed at a nonprofit four days a week, each PA class (which is usually made up of about 30 people) also works in teams on group service projects across the city. Jadyn McQueen, a recently-graduated ally, worked with CAKE, an org that hopes to better connect those within the small, often overlooked, Carthage neighborhood.
“When we got there we realized it was very segregated. There’s a black business owners’ section, an old Appalachian population, there’s a whole lot of Hispanic families there,” McQueen says. “We realized that these people live together, but they don’t communicate with each other, they don’t really like each other and they don’t know how to co-exist.”
So the group interviewed and listened to members across the community then created an asset map of needs — i.e., despite being an area with families, there are no health services in the neighborhood. Plus, they tried to get pockets of underrepresented demographics to be more heard in the community’s government. At the end, they hosted a fair at a central church to connect the neighbors to services as well as one another.
Just as Anderson was helping others gain skills and make connections, she was doing the same for herself, helping her land her current job at Bridgeable, a young company that seeks to connect decision makers to the faces behind issues so they make more informed, effective decisions.
“Policy makers are not hearing from the people — whether it’s their fault they’re not trying — people aren’t showing up,” Anderson says. “Working at WIN, it showed me how important it was to get people to show up.”
That’s the kind of locally-focused leadership PA tries to cultivate, those running the program say.
Nickol Mora came to Cincinnati during the height of the Great Recession. It was 2009 and she had just graduated with a degree in print journalism from Point Park University in Pittsburgh. Not knowing her exact plan, she moved back in with her parents in Cincy and joined a Public Allies chapter.
After working in other parts of the nonprofit sector in Cincinnati, she came back to PA as a program manager and now serves as PA Cincinnati’s site director.
“I totally, single-handedly attribute (my career) to Public Allies,” Mora says. “For me, it gave me that grounding I was looking for and the purpose of the work I wanted to do. I found that I was really passionate about nonprofit work.”
She says that it gave her the skills and exposure to feel connected to a new city and the issues that affect it.
“Our focus is really on homegrown leadership,” she says. “So the folks that are from the city or are looking to stay invested in the city that aren’t traditionally looked at as leaders and aren’t pegged for positions of influence within organizations or communities (can be).”
The program is diverse on several levels. LGBTQ individuals made up 24 percent of 2018’s group, while 43 percent were Caucasian and 43 percent were African-American; 10 percent were biracial and 3 percent Latino.
Levels of education were even-keeled too, spread evenly at about 20 percent between high school/GED, 4-year college and associate-level degrees.
With each class, Mora says they aim to ensure that at least 40 percent of individuals entering the program are economically disadvantaged, which they define as unemployed or underemployed at the time of application or, either growing up or currently, they were eligible for public benefits. This year, 76 percent met that definition.
Like many AmeriCorps programs, Public Allies originally catered to recent college and high school grads, who usually joined to take a gap year. But, Mora says that’s where they now stray from similar organizations.
“For us, the notion of service is important, but more so it’s about our mission to create a just and equitable society and the diverse leadership to sustain it,” Mora says. “So, what does it look like when we reconsider what a leader looks like — who that is and why they can lead? I think that’s where the real distinction is. So, folks that come into the program are fully representative of our community.”
In recent years, they’ve pushed to include older participants in their ranks, like Anderson, who says that she thought she would be the oldest person in her class — which wasn’t the case. Working with the younger allies, she says, helped her gain new perspective.
One of those younger allies was McQueen. After being placed at the Cincinnati Health Department as a crib secure educator, McQueen took a job at Cincinnati Children’s. In the fall, she’ll return to get her master’s in public health at the University of Cincinnati.
She credits her recent career path to her time serving as an ally, which exposed her to issues of health inequity in Cincinnati.
“(Public Allies) gives you opportunity to figure out who you are,” she says. “Your potential is limitless. I went in open, not knowing what I wanted to do. So every time there was an opportunity to try something out, they give you tons of that (support).”
In the next 20 years, Mora hopes to expand Public Allies’ outreach and continue to foster values that were sown at its inception.
“The long-term vision is that really, we’re creating these value-based leaders. It doesn’t matter what sector they go into,” Mora says, adding that no matter where they go after they can apply Public Allies’ values — diversity, inclusion, collaboration and focus on assets, integrity — to their work.
