
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, December 31, 1994                   TAG: 9501050019
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TAP, TAPPING AWAY AT POVERTY

ANTI-poverty efforts and entrepreneurship may seem an odd mix - but only to those unfamiliar with Roanoke-based Total Action Against Poverty. Gov. George Allen, among others, would do well to familiarize himself with its work.

Like other, largely unsung community-action agencies throughout the United States, TAP's job is - has been for going on 30 years - to offer the poor not a handout but a helping hand up. Consider, for example, TAP's new "entrepreneurial class."

Neighborhood bakeries, beauty shops, day-care centers, even a hot-dog stand - these sorts of small businesses keep the pulse of communities beating strong, and offer hope of resuscitation to faltering ones. They are the hope, too, of people who dream of owning and operating their own businesses.

Many low-income people, contrary perhaps to stereotype, share that dream, but they often lack the knowledge and the capital to get started. TAP is offering a little of each - a 14-week class and a small loan - to help what is so far a handful of students take a crack at getting into business.

TAP can't guarantee their success. No businessperson starts with that guarantee. But in typical fashion, the nonprofit agency is chiseling away obstacles and disadvantages so the people that it can reach - and this is by no means all of the region's poor - at least have an opportunity to act on their dreams.

Unlike government assistance programs designed to give the poor enough cash, food and housing subsidies to survive, TAP's purpose is to get them enough education and training to get a job and become self-supporting. Yet, even as the Allen administration is proposing a two-year limit on welfare benefits, the governor's budget amendments would eliminate state Community Service Block Grants that, together with federal grants, give community agencies such as TAP their seed money. The administration needs to reconsider.

TAP uses its government funding as leverage to raise far more in private donations. With the support of legions of volunteers, it helps provide for education, employment training, counseling, emergency shelter for abused women and other support services that help people become self-sufficient.

The well-worn proverb advises that if you give a hungry man a fish, he can eat that day; if you teach him to fish, he can eat every day. Throughout its productive 30 years, TAP has worked not only to teach the hungry to fish, but to make sure they have the hook and line needed to do so.

The Allen administration would cut the line, then two years later take away the free fish.

Breaking the cycle of welfare dependency fostered by government programs is a worthy goal. Success will benefit not only taxpayers, but also those caught up in a system that allows subsistence living but little hope. Success won't happen, though, without strategies that work. Community action works. It is itself, in many ways, entrepreneurial.

Mixing hard-nosed business with do-good social work? TAP's paid and volunteer workers have for three decades swum in such crosscurrents, playing a vital community role by helping people move from dependency to productivity. If we are to have the poor always with us, let's hope TAP remains right there, too.

by CNB