The Well Incorporated

I am applying because I want to continue to set tables to which we can all bring our own poverty. Poverty is not just a lack of resources, but the lack of a freedom that everyone has experienced in some way, regardless of material status: addiction, feeling captive in careers, debt, or the concrete material absence of life’s necessities like food, clothes, transportation, etc. This understanding helps us all relate to one another’s specific expressions of poverty that may differ from our own. I want to invite everyone in our city to come to the table as it is there, in relationship, that we are transformed in our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors toward one another. It is there that we can best interact with and meet one another's needs; materially, socially, psychologically, and spiritually. 

If selected, we would use the funding as investment in an infrastructure replicate the self-sustaining model of our WellBuilt enterprise in support of The Well’s other programs that are also functioning as the tables that people gather around. Programs like our community gardens and free mobile grocery market which is working to get food that might otherwise be wasted to neighbors that might otherwise go hungry.

My life was transformed by interacting with and learning from the poor. In those relationships, I realized my own non-material poverty and found freedom in the wisdom and wealth of the materially poor. It became clear to me that much of what is broken in our city is relational. 

This compelled me to partner with like-minded people, both those experiencing material poverty and those with resources, to build The Well, where we “set tables” that bring people together across lines that often divide us. We started with literal tables at community dinners, then open mics, then gardens, and many other such initiatives to bring folks together. These “tables” would evolve to become the network of programs that make up our work today. These include WellBuilt Bikes, a social enterprise that allows folks without money to purchase a bike with community service hours, The Kinship, which delivers groceries to food insecure neighborhoods, and The Eden Project, a community garden where folks can work together to produce their own food. Our goals are to connect and empower people to take ownership of the condition of their own community and leverage their own work and resources to help create a more WellBuilt City.

One in 5 residents of Tampa (71,425 souls) lives with material poverty and a lack of access to basic resources. This rate (20%) is higher than that found in the rest of Florida (15.5%) and not as high as many of the areas in which The Well works.

The Well is a 501c3 with a growing number of subsidiaries that work to “set tables” in the community. These include WellBuilt Bikes, which grew out of feedback from direct relationships with Tampa’s large homeless population. The feedback was simple, behind every specific concrete need like food, clothes, etc. there are deeper, underlying issues connected to lack of physical access. The Kinship Mobile Free Market, which takes food, toiletries, and other items into communities that are in need does so with a focus on meeting needs in a way that is dignifying and facilitates the development of relationships. The Kinship, which distributes 15 times a month, also provides regular interactions between Kinship volunteers and their communities.  We have found that the “tables” created by The Kinship and WellBuilt Bikes lead to relational healing, increased social capital, and freedom, the very opposite of poverty for all of us.

The Well uses a well-supported strengths-based approach that both reduces the stigma associated with material poverty and empowers those with these experiences through inclusivity and the recognition that all members of a community are valued and needed. The Well is innovative in both its social entrepreneurial model and approach to poverty reduction that involves the whole community in addressing the social exclusion of marginalized members. The Well works with organizations across the city and involves people of all socio-economic groups in providing food for those who live in food deserts (Kinship) and in finding, refurbishing, and selling bicycles that in turn help to fund its socially inclusive programs (WellBuilt).

The real innovation of The Well however is the relational approach underlying all that we do. It is true that all of The Well’s programs are really just opportunities to build relationships. The simplicity of this posture has meant dignifying services and a listening and learning posture toward communities within which we work. Each program decision can be traced back to a conversation with a neighbor in need, including the determination of what night of the week a community ride should be held.

St. Francis of Assisi is credited with saying “Start by doing what is necessary, then do what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” This has been something of a roadmap for us. When we first encountered neighbors that needed food, clothes, etc. we scrambled to directly meet those needs, even if it meant pulling up in their neighborhood in a beat up pick-up with cardboard boxes of food in the back. Then, we asked what is possible. We found it possible to make everything more dignifying by building a refrigerated unit, bringing tablecloths, and baskets for our grocery distribution. We found it possible to build a business that would sustain itself while meeting the transportation needs of our neighbors. We found it possible to work together to grow food and our work through meaningful partnerships throughout the city. As a result, in just the last year we have shared over 83K lbs of groceries with more than 5k neighbors and put 343 bikes back on the road. Through this we have found that by facilitating reciprocal relationships in all that we do we are suddenly doing the impossible: the transformation of “us & them” into just “us”