Teach Him How To Fish

Last night I was on the Transition New Orleans website leaving my idea about what needs to be done to help the city. We have an Education Task Force and an Employment Task Force. My idea is something they both should work on. This is what I wrote to the transition team…


“I believe the Economic Development Task Force and the Education Task Force should work together to create a well funded adult literacy and job training program. As we work on economic development and fix our school system, we should not ignore that the failures in the school system for years has created a large amount of adults that are not qualified and incapable of taking advantage of new job opportunities. We have to give that group a chance to better themselves.”

It’s my opinion that the biggest failure of this city has been the failure to help break the cycle of low wages and lack of opportunity for the working poor. We have generations of under educated and unqualified people that couldn’t find jobs if they wanted to. Progress and change is going to go right over their heads. If we are serious about changing the city we should try to set up an adult education program as well as a job training program to give those people a chance to improve their situation. I think people should judge the success or failure of any agenda by their personal position. If we have all this development going on and all I see are people driving in from the suburbs to work like they do now then leadership failed me again. I don’t mean to offend anyone but I’m not that excited about creating a few thousand jobs so transplants can move here and tell me how awesome New Orleans is while the people I grew around are looking for someone to help them pay rent and the light bill. It’s hard for me to get excited about that. New Orleans will be turning around when everyone gets a fair chance to enjoy it. It’s hard to get a fair chance at doing better when you can’t read a job application and have no professional skills. If we are going to take a different approach to things then lets do it the right way. We need an adult education program so folks can make some real money to provide for their families.