Blogging with Dean Lisa Servon

I grew up spending my summers with my family in a tiny bungalow on the Jersey Shore. We had no phone and only an outdoor shower. One summer, my mother—who was quite creative—decided we should paint the outdoor shower stall. The year was 1975, I was almost 11 years old, and the book Jaws by Peter Benchley had just come out. On the inside door of the shower, my mother recreated the cover of Jaws, the shark emerging from the deep while a lone, oblivious swimmer stroked her way across the top. (My younger sister, who was 3, was terrified and refused to go into the shower alone). On the other side of the door, the part that faced the deck, my mother painted a funny bird with a speech bubble that said: “Conserve water—share a shower!” Those were the days when we were just beginning to understand the connection between human actions and the condition of the planet. How many of you remember the “crying Indian” commercial?

Today (Sunday, when I’m writing this) is World Water Day. Water, like so many things those of us who live a privileged life have, is too easy to take for granted. And if you think it’s hard to get adults to grasp how critical this issue is, try teaching a 4- and a 6- year old. My kids love nothing more than splashing around in the bathtub. “Fill it more up!” they’ll shout. And when I’m at my wit’s end trying to figure out how to entertain them, nothing works better than a big pot of water and some plastic cups and toy dinosaurs. But today we talked to them about how so many children do not have clean water to bathe in, to drink or to cook their food. “Why?” they ask. Try answering that question.

Figuring out how to conserve water, and how to get clean water to all people, is a huge and basic policy and management challenge. Here’s an excerpt from the World Health Organization:

“Each year more than 1 billion of our fellow human beings have little choice but to resort to using potentially harmful sources of water. This perpetuates a silent humanitarian crisis that kills some 3900 children every day and thwarts progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The consequences of our collective failure to tackle this problem are the dimmed prospects for the billions of people locked in a cycle of poverty and disease.

The root of this underlying catastrophe lies in these plain, grim facts: 4 of every 10 people in the world do not have access to even a simple pit latrine and nearly 2 in 10 have no source of safe drinking-water. To help end this appalling state of affairs, the MDGs include a specific target (number 10) to cut in half, by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking-water and basic sanitation. In addition, the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Water and Sanitation recently recognized that integrated development and management of water resources are crucial to the success or failure of all the MDGs, as water is central to the livelihood systems of the poor.”

If you’d like to learn more about World Water Day, go to www.worldwaterday.org. And do what you can, even if your actions seem small, to use less water. Remember to turn off the water when you’re brushing your teeth and to keep a cold pitcher of water in the fridge so you don’t need to let it run to get cold enough to drink. Or better yet, share a shower.

A couple of days ago, the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund announced its plan for awarding funds made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act).

This is good news, because CDFIs are small but essential players in the financial services landscape, and they have gotten close to no media attention during this crisis when financial institutions are very much in the news. Some worry that, given the difficulties in obtaining funding, this sector might be on the verge of collapse. CDFIs serve people and neighborhoods that are generally not well served by mainstream financial institutions such as banks. They provide an alternative to informal and costly providers of financial services in low-income communities such as loan sharks, check cashing outlets, pawn shops and rent to own businesses.

Here is an excerpt from a post on the community development banking listserv, to which I subscribe:

"This latest announcement that infuses some of our hardest hit communities with much needed capital further demonstrates Treasury's commitment to swift, efficient and effective implementation of the various components of the Administration's comprehensive economic agenda,” said Treasury Secretary Geithner. "The Recovery Act is enabling more funds to flow to these community-based lenders that are responsibly providing financing to help small businesses, creating needed jobs and saving homes in low-income areas across the country that have been hit hard by this economic crisis."

The Recovery Act provides an additional $90 million in CDFI Program Financial Assistance (FA) and Technical Assistance (TA) awards; $8 million for the Native American CDFI Assistance (NACA) program; and $3 billion in additional tax credit authority for the New Markets Tax Credit program (FY2008 and FY2009). The total FY2009 funding available for FA/TA is now $145 million and for NACA it is $14.5 million. The CDFI Fund stated that it plans to award all the Recovery Act funds in less than 90 days and will begin disbursing the awards within 120 days.

"I commend Secretary Geithner and the Treasury Department for moving quickly to implement these innovative programs to help underserved communities," said Vice President Biden. "They are exactly what the President and I had in mind when we put forth the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act."

In brief, the CDFI Fund will re-open its 2009 CDFI Program and NACA Program award rounds to enable additional applicants to apply and will offer current applicants the opportunity to request larger awards. Applicants that did apply under the initial FY 2009 award rounds will have the opportunity to increase the amounts they requested in their applications to as much as $2 million under the CDFI Program and $750,000 under the NACA Program. As a reminder, the Recovery Act waives the matching funds requirement as well as the general requirement that no single awardee (or its affiliates) can receive more than $5 million from the CDFI Fund over a three-year period.

For NMTC, the CDFI Fund will allocate $3 billion of tax credit authority as follows: $1.5 billion to CDEs that applied for allocation authority under the 2008 NMTC allocation round but did not receive a 2008 allocation; and $1.5 billion to CDEs that apply for allocation authority under the 2009 NMTC allocation round. Note this is in addition to the $3.5 billion already allocated for FY2009.

If you have applied for the FY2009 round, the CDFI Fund may contact you for additional information.

Reporting: Reporting requirements are still under development, but be prepared that the requirements will be extensive! Please review the Office of Management and Budget’s memorandum regarding potential reporting requirements:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/memoranda_fy2009/m09-10.pdf

To view the implementation plan, go to

http://www.cdfifund.gov/recovery/implementationplan.pdf

New Program Announced

The CDFI Fund is also planning additional support to CDFIs and Native CDFIs. “The CDFI Fund is pleased to announce additional support for CDFIs during these critical times. While CDFIs are united by the challenges they face, too often they lack the same level of access to resources they need to meet these challenges. In the coming months, the CDFI Fund will unveil a new capacity-building initiative that will provide high-level training, outreach, and intensive, one-on-one technical assistance directly to CDFIs and Native CDFIs.”

Even though it’s spring break, and the halls are eerily quiet, things are happening around here. I’ve just learned that (at least) three of our professors have been nominated for the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award—Mary Watson, Aida Rodriguez, and Nidhi Srinivas. As they say at the Oscars, it is an honor just to be nominated, and we are so proud of them for getting this recognition. We are also proud to have several past recipients of this award on our faculty—Dennis Derryck, Ed Powers, Alec Gershberg… and me! I’m doing this off the top of my head, so it’s entirely possible that I’ve missed someone—apologies in advance.

I can say from my own experience that receiving that award was one of my proudest moments as an educator—to have been nominated by my students, and to see my students and colleagues in the audience when I received the award. It felt good. Please join me in congratulating Nidhi, Mary and Aida on their nominations.

Be well-

l.