Information about vital social services that are open and available to the public is now available on 1degree.org for community members who have been adversely affected both medically and financially by COVID-19 (Coronavirus). 

With many nonprofit organizations, schools, and workplaces closed and communities in lockdown, low-income and marginalized communities are struggling to know where to turn to for help. In collaboration with nonprofit organizations throughout California, One Degree has created a Dynamic Resource Guide with a comprehensive list of free or low-cost resources available for the public to access today. The link to the resource guide can be found at 1degree.org/covid-19. 

The guide includes resources such as food, financial, and childcare resources for people who are experiencing the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and is updated in real time to provide the most reliable information. Additional resources for those dealing with COVID-19 are available on www.1degree.org and free to access by anyone at any time.

Aside from needing to get medical care to those who are actually showing symptoms of the virus, community members are starting to feel the downstream effects from closures of schools and workplaces, such as lack of food, need for childcare, and reduced wages.

“I have been in contact with over 50 other leaders from California nonprofit organizations, and a common need I kept hearing was for reliable information about what resources are available right now, especially since nonprofit organizations are closing their doors and limiting their services,”  said One Degree founder and CEO Rey Faustino. 

“In this time of uncertainty, we are seeing the nonprofit community pull together to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable members of our community. One Degree is a conduit for that collaborative spirit.”

At this time One Degree invites all nonprofits and healthcare providers in the Bay Area and Los Angeles County to collaborate and share information with One Degree so that our community members have up-to-the-minute information on resources in their community. 

About One Degree (www.1degree.org)

One Degree is a technology-driven nonprofit organization that helps individuals and families access the resources they need to improve their lives and achieve social and economic mobility. 

The One Degree platform has become the go-to tool for help-seekers – and the people who support them, such as case managers and social workers – throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County in California, and in Gainesville, Florida.

One Degree currently operates three major products: 1degree.org and Android and iOS apps. Thousands of people in the Bay Area and Los Angeles rely on One Degree’s platform to access health care, food banks, employment services, and much more.

Every so often, I get invited to speak on panels about our work, and I usually find myself being the odd person out. The panelists that I’m speaking alongside are usually operating from a completely different context than our world at Alluma, where we are used to working in partnership with our communities. I recently joined a panel organized by the Los Angeles Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) coalition, and, once again, had this same experience. My co-panelists were the other main “vendors” of social referral tools in Los Angeles: founders and leaders at Unite Us, Aunt Bertha, and NowPow.

Reflecting back on the experience, I wanted to take some time to share my thoughts, paint the picture, and create the context that is necessary if we, as a community, intend to address social determinants of health. In my opinion, social determinants of health are really just coded language for addressing race equity. Here are four lessons from my experience.

1. For-profit companies are not incentivized to collaborate, and this leads to failure

When I got the briefing for this event, I learned that the group wanted to dig into the pain points that health care systems are facing with the implementations of referral tools including: interoperability, collaboration among vendors, data standardization, and roles and responsibilities between vendors and clients.

While I think these issues are relevant, I challenged the group to see the bigger picture: Are we building and perpetuating systems of oppression that continue to exploit communities of color, immigrant communities, and low-income communities?

I explained that healthcare institutions are using broken procurement processes to invest in technology systems that have major impacts on the community without using an equity lens. The for-profit companies that they are investing millions of dollars in are also built on a corporate structure that prioritizes profits for shareholders over long-term improvement and the well-being of the community.

Ultimately, the profit motive means the system doesn’t work for those who need it. There’s fragmentation in the space as demonstrated by the very panel itself, where four different social referral platforms are operating within multiple systems in Los Angeles County. There’s fragmentation among community-based organizations (CBOs) — and then you add the layer of confusion with health systems asking those CBOs to use multiple referral platforms (without adequate incentives).

This system is failing because the for-profit companies in this space do not have the incentive to collaborate and build a better system together. In fact, their corporate structure incentivizes them to NOT collaborate with others, which is why, after almost a decade of working in this space, none of these companies can point to meaningful collaborations amongst their peers. While we continue to be invited to speak on panels, the for-profit companies continue spouting off the same scripted marketing language.

My main point during this panel was that in order to truly build equitable solutions that create health and well-being for our communities, we need to intentionally center our work on racial equity, not on profits. Centering the work on race equity also means building not just “for people” but also with and by the people, who may be open to screening for social needs but have no expectation that a provider will solve their social needs problems.

2. The dominant white lens means these companies completely miss the point

Meanwhile, we’re all still going through a pandemic that completely upended the healthcare industry, killed over 500,000 people, and disproportionately killed black and brown people, and Filipino-American nurses.

Which is why I do not have the patience to stand by and listen to empty promises and meaningless marketing jargon from companies that talk about their work as if it’s just another day at the office. For me, there’s a real, visceral, personal urgency to fix this problem because my communities are being decimated and are dying. So when we have the CEOs and founders of the leading social referral platforms in a panel together and the primary themes put on the table are data standardization and interoperability, please excuse me while I wave my red flag. How can we go through an international crisis that is continuing to gut-punch the healthcare industry, yet still be unable to talk about the real problem of race equity? This is the white dominant lens at play.

3. These companies profit by taking advantage of misconceptions

The companies that are exploiting the market and profiting off of the pain of our communities are taking advantage of some misconceptions that emerge in the healthcare industry as a result of the white dominant lens.

Misconception #1: “The experts will create the right standards”

One thing that all of the panelists agreed on is that the technical problems are actually all solvable. All of the technical solutions we provide are similarly specced. Problems like standardization of terminology and developing interoperability have all been solved in other industries and can be done in ours.

However, there’s an assumption that the standards that a group of for-profit companies creates are going to be the right standards for our communities. And yet, big tech and social media companies show us what happens when you leave the development of standards to for-profit companies unchecked and without accountability. Just look at the problematic data and privacy concerns that social media companies are muddling through.

I would not and do not trust standards that this group of for-profit companies creates unless they specifically outline and pledge a commitment toward racial equity. Beyond that, we fall into a similar problem of trusting that because they’re “experts” in the field, they’ll know what’s best for our communities. In fact, our communities know what’s best for their communities. And any standards created that will affect the community should have involvement from community representatives.

Furthermore, I actually think that the conversation around data standardization and interoperability is a red herring. As I mentioned, we know this is a solvable problem, but the challenge is that there is no incentive in the for-profit corporate structure to invest time and resources in co-developing standards. For-profit companies simply don’t have the financial incentive to do this.

Meanwhile, the bigger challenge that we need to address is investing in nonprofit organizations that can act as intermediaries that incentivize and get the for-profit companies to agree to centering their work around race equity, rather than referrals.

Misconception #2: “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

I know that the work of systems change can feel daunting. If you’re one person working in one community benefits department, how do you dismantle white supremacy in the beast that is the healthcare industry?

But I reminded this audience of healthcare professionals that they have more power than they think they do. The coalition building they are doing together is a great start to grow more power. The fact that this loose coalition was created organically to think critically about major implementation challenges in the referrals platform space is a signal to me that the space is beginning to mature.

I recommended to the audience that we need to broaden the coalition to include nonprofit organizations that serve our community as well as the nonprofit and for-profit organizations that are delivering the referral platforms.

With a broad, multi-sector coalition, we can co-create shared goals that help us address the main challenges of race equity and health equity. And co-creating these goals with for-profit stakeholders will help hold them accountable to other metrics beyond profit for shareholders.

These kinds of collective impact models have been successfully implemented throughout the country in the education sector and are a viable option for the healthcare space.

Misconception #3: “Race equity and problems with capitalism are just philosophical musings.”

One of the panelists tried to dismiss my emphasis on race equity by saying that it was just “philosophical musing.” At first I was offended, but remembered that a common tactic of white supremacy is downplaying the voices of people of color. This is how they steamroll a group into their white dominant perspective.

I can understand that for this white male CEO, who started his company because he wanted to do good and make money while doing it, this particular context is challenging. It challenges the very incentive structure that has resources coming to his company. And I can see why someone would believe that my call to center our work on race equity was just “philosophical musing” if they have never been at the blunt end of the penalties of this incentive structure.

While it might sound like philosophical flight of fancy to some, questioning the systems that we’re operating under is a necessary step in creating justice for people who have been left out of care. Just like the criminal justice system is facing a reckoning with its inherently racist structures, the healthcare system has to be held accountable for its own part in perpetuating cycles of racial oppression. We see this every day during the pandemic as people of color are disproportionately getting sick and dying.

I mentioned on the panel that I’m not disparaging their for-profit companies, and this is not a judgment on capitalism. This is a reality check on us for relying on capitalism to save the day. Capitalism is not going to save us.

4. We must center our work on race equity

I think the audience and panelists are seeing that all of the panelists (Alluma included) share a lot of similarities in the technology that we’re providing. The key difference is that we, at Alluma, have a very clear community-based point of view on how to affect change. We must center our work on race equity. Otherwise we risk perpetuating the systems of oppression that are currently hurting our communities.

In contrast the for-profit companies also have a strong point of view on the work, and it’s a very strong perspective around scale, market domination, and profit for shareholders. We can’t wait for the for-profit vendors to provide the systems change that we need because they’re not incentivized to center their work on race equity. It’s up to us to create the counter-narrative, a perspective that is based on the voices of the people and communities that we serve.

Loss of income to pay rent, loss of employment, loss of food security. The COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak has changed our lives in immense ways, and for many the loss of security across the board became imminent.

In mid-March, I, along with the One Degree team began to work completely remotely in response to stay-at-home orders, with the question lingering in all our minds, “What can we do to help?”

The One Degree team came together to brainstorm and plan a response, leading to the creation of a dynamic resource guide for those affected by COVID-19 in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County.

A few months have passed and One Degree continues to carry out our mission, and center our community, by mobilizing to improve our resource guide. I’m excited to share with you the next development in our COVID-19 response. With the help of over 20 volunteers we transferred our Resource Guide into a series of Collections on One Degree. You can think of a Collection, as a digital resource binder (here’s an example).

Evolving the Resource Guide into Resource Collections provides the community with an improved experience on our platform — it’s the ideal next step. Here’s why:
Community members can now:

• save a resource using their One Degree account
• track their progress towards accessing a resource in their My Plan section

Service providers can now:

• use our Referrals tool to send resources to clients/patients directly
• check in on clients/patients status to accessing resources

These are all features and tools that our community already has access to when searching for resources on One Degree, and we are thrilled to bring them to our COVID-19 resources.

Evolution of the COVID-19 Resource Guide to Collections

The first phase of our COVID-19 resource guide lived in a Google document that we updated daily with resource listings focused on food support, financial support, and childcare support (three of the most urgent needs identified early on in the outbreak), for all nine counties in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County. Community members and partners in the social service sector also started sending us resource information. We quickly realized that we needed to dedicate some of our team members exclusively to this important project, and so we shifted One Degree’s Resource Management department to support our commitment to updating new resource information everyday.

We also realized that we couldn’t do it alone! We received over 100 volunteer applications since March and over 40 volunteers contributed to the first COVID-19 resource guide.

Partnerships with other social service organizations and community groups sharing other guides with us led to the addition of hundreds of resources. We were so thrilled with the incredible amount of support we received. This growth, the expanding collaboration, and the number of people using the guide made us realize that our processes and delivery mechanism needed to change.

The next phase of the Resource Guide offered a mobile-friendly website using an off-the-shelf system that One Degree’s UI/UX Designer quickly customized and made beautiful. We continued to maintain our web pages, adding more and more resources daily. As incredible and comprehensive as this site was, our resource guide became long lists of resources and scrolling through them was challenging. Also, our community didn’t have the ability to save resource information for reference later.

To address these issues, in early May, we set our plan in motion to transfer our COVID-19 Resource Guide into a series of Collections on One Degree. With the support of our volunteer team, resources were transferred to the One Degree platform using the Resource Editing Tool and we were able to make the transition. Our COVID-19 Resource Guide evolution was made possible by volunteers, and we couldn’t be more thankful.

COVID-19 Resource Guide Collaborators

Cal State Los Angeles MPH students. At the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, a group of Master’s of Public Health students at Cal State Los Angeles created an extensive Google Document, “COVID-19 Los Angeles Mass Resource List,” to address the urgent need to create one site where those in need could find essential community resources. One Degree collaborated with them to grow our LA County resource gathering. We are extremely grateful for their support and contribution. Thank you, Joyce Paraico, Jamila Cervantes, and Xugo Lujan Jr.! (Pictured below)

Xugo also shared some words with One Degree on our collaboration:

I attached a picture of my grandmother and myself. The reason for my investment in identifying resources is to ensure that the most vulnerable, like my grandmother, have the ability to stay safe and healthy. One step is to remove barriers to knowledge of resources. Thank you to everyone at One Degree. You all provide an immeasurable support to folks statewide.

Los Angeles Department of Health Services (LADHS). Our partners at LADHS generously offered some of their team members to work on our LA resources for the guide. Six LADHS staff members joined One Degree’s COVID-19 response by adding resources. Thank you, Stephanie Stone, Angelica Aviles, Lourdes “Ninette” Polanco-Aguilar, Reynaldo Garcia, Jeannette Johnson, and Arieneh Shahverdian!

Volunteers

We are humbled by the number of people who have come forward to support this effort. We would never have been able to offer this resource to the community without their support and dedication. Below are profiles of a few of our amazing volunteers. We love you all!

Zainab Ebrahimi (pictured below) is a Chilean-Iranian software engineer based in Brooklyn, NY. In her spare time she volunteers as a computer science teacher for Code Nation. Zainab is a Spanish translation volunteer for our COVID-19 resource guide.

Here’s what Zainab has to say about her volunteer work:

When the pandemic hit the US, I felt a responsibility to contribute however I could to help the people being affected the most. I’m grateful I found One Degree and that they needed someone who was able to translate to Spanish. It makes me happy to know we are able to serve the Spanish speaking community and allow them access to important resources that can help them navigate the COVID-19 crisis.

Eric Joshua Garcia (not pictured) is from Maryland and graduated from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2019. He is currently working as a research fellow and, during his free time, he loves cooking, hiking, and photography.

Eric also shared some words with us about his volunteer experience:

Atthe beginning of this pandemic, I immediately began to think of ways I could help (from a safe, social distance). After searching through various virtual opportunities, I came across One Degree’s volunteer page. I was struck by their mission to help people adversely affected by the pandemic and immediately applied to become a COVID-19 resource volunteer. I quickly grew to love the experience since I knew the work we were doing could positively impact someone’s life during their time of need. It truly changed my perspective to see the numerous resources and the outpouring of support from individuals and organizations across California and the rest of the nation.

Dzifa Amexo (pictured below) is a senior at Mercy College studying finance and data analytics. She is currently living in New Jersey with her family and during the school year she lives in Dobbs Ferry, New York. During her free time Dzifa enjoys volunteering, karaoke, data visualization, and traveling.

Dzifa also had some words on her experience as a data volunteer:

I’ve always been driven to volunteer and give back in any way that I can from a young age. My mission is to leave this earth better than I inhabited it and so I strive to make an impact one person at a time. Knowing that if you pay it forward, hopefully, the circle of generosity will continue. Once my semester was made completely online due to COVID-19, I had a lot of free time being back at home. I thought to myself “how can I help” (well from my computer screen) and came across One Degree as a virtual opportunity. I was inspired to start because of the mission, which is focused on empowerment.

Mauricio Sepulveda (pictured below) is from Chile and has been living in New York for a little over a year. He came to live in the United States because of a job opportunity for his wife and stopped working as an Industrial Engineer in a bank in Chile, he now calls New York home.

Here’s how Mauricio describes his volunteer work as a Spanish translator volunteer:

Iliked the option of starting to work as a volunteer [with One Degree] since this would help me improve my language, expand my network, and mainly support the Latino community that does not understand English. I have always valued the people who work as volunteers, and I believe that it is part of being an integral professional to be able to dedicate time to help those who need it. Thank you very much for accepting me, so that I can contribute in times of crisis, and when the world needs us more united.

In closing

As One Degree’s Resource Coordinator it has been an unbelievable experience to spearhead our COVID-19 Resource Guide efforts and response. I am amazed at the enormous support we received from the One Degree team, partners and volunteers. It has been incredible to work with so many people motivated to lend a helping hand during a time of crisis. I look forward to continuing our COVID-19 resource guide work for the community!

Questions about our work? Need help finding resources? Contact us at help@1degree.org.

I joined Alluma as One Degree’s Director of New Markets in March, but I’ve been partnering with the One Degree team for nearly three years now. My journey started in 2018 with an exciting new project in New York City called Fair Futures and I found some familiar challenges along the way.

Connecting Dreams and Aspirations to Services and Programs

The Fair Futures NYC program model serves young people who have been in the foster care system. The core of the Fair Futures model is a deep focus on the youths’ aspirations, strengths, and identity. It consists of a robust middle school program that prepares students for success in high school, and a long-term coaching program from 9th grade until age 26. The model includes 3,000+ young people served by 300+ staff in 26 nonprofits across five boroughs — no easy feat!

This deep focus on individual youth aspirations meant that Fair Futures staff and young people needed the ability to explore the academic and career resources, programs, and services available in NYC.

Shouldn’t This be Searchable?

I was assigned the task of collecting and organizing all the relevant resources, programs, and services. During this process, I found important resource information offered in different locations. For example, while two different print manuals were available from two different organizations, a third organization tracked this information in a set of four Excel spreadsheets and two PDF documents. A fourth organization employed a consultant to update its list annually.

And each of them had unique resources that were critical to the success of Fair Futures!

I’ve seen this everywhere I’ve worked. From Chicago to Washington, D.C. to New York City, incredible teams of people come together to fund, build, and deliver innovative programs and services to help their communities. And in each of these places, the same questions were asked: Which organization provides what programs? Who can apply? How? Where? Shouldn’t this be searchable?

Equal and Easy Access for All

At Fair Futures, we quickly realized that an online directory was needed. A one-stop shop with all available resources and related critical information would help ensure everyone had equal and easy access to all the rich academic and career opportunities that NYC has to offer.

After initially exploring a custom-built directory, we realized that Fair Futures wouldn’t have the expertise and capacity to maintain a software platform and all of the resource information. So, the team started looking for an existing tool that could be customized for Fair Futures and NYC, and found the right partner in One Degree, by Alluma.

One Degree can be accessed on almost any device via desktop and mobile website browsers, iPhone and Android mobile apps, and text-to-search. Resources included in the One Degree database are updated at least every six months, and all resources are easily printed and shared by Fair Futures coaches and specialists.

The Results

One Degree + Fair Futures NYC launched in 2020 with a set of 470 high-quality internship, job readiness, and vocational/sector-based training programs. Later that year, The City University of New York (CUNY) reached out to Fair Futures, became an official partner, and the One Degree Resource Management team added 300 CUNY certificate programs. In spring 2021, several hundred more CUNY internship and upskilling programs were added. In total, nearly 1,500 searchable academic and career opportunities for young people are now available on One Degree!

The Fair Futures + One Degree partnership has been a huge success. Fair Futures gets to focus on the aspirations of young people, CUNY gets to focus on providing a first-rate public education, and One Degree handles operating, maintaining, and updating the directory and resources information that helps turn aspirations into reality.