Our current Challenge partner is Detroit COTS, which stands for \u201cCoalition on Temporary Shelter\u201d. \u201cCOTS\u201d isn\u2019t just a homeless shelter. It is an organization that aims to lift families out of generational poverty using a comprehensive five pillared system referred to as the Passport to Self Sufficiency. COTS recognizes that homelessness is a symptom of the greater issue of poverty. Homelessness would be a much easier issue to tackle if the only hurdle was finding individuals a home that they could afford. Diving into our Challenge with our partners we were able to learn more about the multi-layered issues preventing people from moving out of poverty and in to self-sufficiency.
\nThe foundation of COTS five pillared system is housing. They choose to attack this obstacle first in order to create a more stable environment for the families they support. COTS does not limit the amount of time they will help a family. This alleviates the stress of worrying about when they will lose support and allows families to focus on other barriers that prevent them from being self-sufficient.
\nAfter securing housing COTS moves into the other four pillars which are: Health and Well Being, Education and Training, Employment and Career, and Financial. Every pillar addresses challenges stemming from generational poverty that would have never been apparent to me without hearing from the professionals at COTS. It seems obvious to most people to use a bank for your financial needs, but maybe you don\u2019t have an I.D. or have made some mistakes and can\u2019t access a bank. You have to use check cashing institutions that will take a portion of your already limited funds in order to have access to that money. You need an education to open up doors to opportunity but when you\u2019re already living in poverty how do you find the time or money to get your education? Health and Well Being doesn\u2019t simply mean access to health care. Well-being is also making sure you\u2019re in a positive place, and having a loving positive support structure which is something a lot of folks that come to COTS are missing.
\nSupport is the biggest thing COTS can provide for individuals. It isn\u2019t just letting people know what they need to do to improve their situations in these five pillars, but being there when they stumble in their pursuits to let them know they still can improve their situation. They say it takes four generations to climb out of poverty but with places like COTS hopefully that transition can be expedited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our current Challenge partner is Detroit COTS, which stands for \u201cCoalition on Temporary Shelter\u201d. \u201cCOTS\u201d isn\u2019t just a homeless shelter. It is an organization that aims to lift families out of generational poverty using a comprehensive five pillared system referred to as the Passport to Self Sufficiency. COTS recognizes that homelessness is a symptom of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}