RALEIGH – For all the “Best of” lists that Raleigh-Durham top these days, there’s also an ugly flipside.

When it comes to upward mobility, the area ranks in the bottom 10 of the nation’s 100 largest commuting zones according to a recent report.

“If you’re born into poverty in our wonderful region, you’re going to stay there,” James Amato, WRAL’s Strategy & Business Development manager put it bluntly to a sellout crowd gathered in WRAL-TV’s Studio A on Tuesday morning.

“In spite of years rooms filled like this, a lot of money and goodwill, we’ve yet to climb out of the bottom of the barrel.”

On that note, he opened up WRAL TechWire Live, a quarterly event sponsored by Wells Fargo with the support from several TechWire partners that aims to coalesce industry experts around a central topic facing the region.

Tuesday’s discussion centered on social impact, and how Triangle nonprofits are working like startups to devise innovative solutions to problems facing our region and neighbors.

WRAL TechWire Live … Jes Averhart, Geraud Staton, Maggie Kane and Rob Shields.

Here are some of the highlights:

Making a place at the table


Among the speakers who presented 8-minute TED-style talks was Maggie Kane, founder and executive director of the nonprofit, A Place at the Table. Back in 2018, she opened a pay-what-you-can café at 3000 W. Hargett Street in downtown Raleigh.

Its mission: to create a welcoming space that provides an opportunity for all people to come and experience community while enjoying a healthy meal – even if you can’t afford to pay.

She came up with the idea after working in a halfway house and recognizing the growing disconnect between the have and have nots.

On any given day, she has paying customers sitting side-by-side to those who volunteer for their meal.

“I didn’t do it because my purpose was to start a restaurant or a non-profit,” she said. ”What I do know is that my purpose is to make every single person, no matter who they are, whether there is a dollar in their pocket or a $1000 in their pocket, feel loved, cared for and treated with the dignity that we all deserve.”

Offer a “high touch”


Next up was Geraud Staton, executive director of The Helius Foundation, which offers a free 12-week coaching and training program for small businesses, particularly necessity-driven entrepreneurs.

Most African Americans, he said, don’t have the advantage of generational wealth and owned property. As such, the only way that they can get ahead is through being an entrepreneur.

“We try to teach an entrepreneurial mindset where they can solve problems and make some money on their own,” he said. “That’s the only way they will be able to get out of poverty.”

A view of the audience at WRAL TechWire Live on Tuesday morning.

However, that’s easier said than done. Many experience  “learned hopelessness,” a term coined by psychologist Martin Seligman in which people feel helpless to avoid negative situations because previous experience has shown them that they do not have control.

The solution: a “high touch” and patience.

“They’re used to suffering. You’re going to have to tell someone over and over and over again that there is a better way before they start to believe it.”

Get up close


Meanwhile, Rob Shields, executive director of ReCity, talked about the problem of proximity.

“We’re disconnected from the needy,” he said. “I experienced this firsthand in southeast Raleigh where we literally built roads to enable us to drive around certain sections of town instead of through them.”

At ReCity, he runs a co-working space for nonprofits so that they can collaborate and innovate “to help the underserved thrive.”

His advice: get as close as you can to the suffering.

“You cannot understand the most important things from a distance. You have to get close. Otherwise we end up drawing conclusions about communities in which we’ve never been and about people whose stories we do not know.”