By Mark Scott
Buffalo, NY – A new tool is now available to human service and government agencies in Buffalo that allows them to better identify resources to help the working poor.
Her name is Sara. She's fictional but represents hundreds of working families in the area. Sara, a single mother of two, makes $6 an hour but her monthly expenses total nearly $1,700. Do the math and you find that Sara is going deeper and deeper into debt every month. But now, something called the Self-Sufficiency Calculator allows Sara's counselors to identify resources she may be missing out on.
"It's put more people on the right track to getting what they need to live," said Mary Jo Hunt of the Western New York Women's Fund. "They're now better able to take advantage of the resources that are available, such as the earned income tax credit."
Hunt and others introduced the Self-Sufficiency Calculator, a web-based computer program, during a day-long meeting that was held Tuesday at UB's Center for Tomorrow. Hunt says the calculator can do in ten minutes what it used to take hours to compile by hand. Myrna Young of the Everywoman Opportunity Center says the new tool will improve the lives of low income workers.
"The goal isn't to sign people up for these work support programs and keep them there," Young said. "The goal is to help them manage their lives and their basic needs right now, while we move them to true self-sufficiency."
The O'Shei Foundation provided a $200,000 to create the Self-Sufficiency Calculator in Buffalo and to train human service providers in how to use it.