Kids Can founder Christensen lands innovator award from Nusenda

April Christensen, founder and program manager of the Kids Can youth entrepreneurship initiative, has been named Nusenda Credit Union and the Nusenda Foundation’s most recent Financial Education Innovator.

“For almost two years, Nusenda Credit Union and Nusenda Foundation have showcased New Mexicans who aim to increase economic mobility in their communities with innovative strategies to improve financial well-being,” said Nusenda’s Vice President of Community Relations Sara Keller in a news release. “April’s mission to help her dyslexic son embrace learning transformed into a program that teaches thousands of at-risk youth in southern New Mexico valuable skills in money management, business development, entrepreneurship and financial responsibility.”

Awardees receive $5,000 in funding from Nusenda Foundation to help develop or grow their initiatives.

The youth entrepreneurship initiative is based out of the Community Action Agency of Southern New Mexico in Las Cruces.

A strong financial education has been shown to have a positive effect on the economic well-being of individuals and their families, and also predicts future healthy behaviors around savings, credit card usage, spending and risk. This is especially important in New Mexico.

The Nusenda Foundation recognizes Financial Education Innovators who are working to buck these trends on a quarterly basis; nominees are accepted year-round and can be from community organizations, nonprofits, and education and government sectors across New Mexico.

This is not a feelgood story. Of course, it’s easy to see why it has been positioned as one. Certainly, it contains all the elements: vulnerable people, heart-rending need, someone going above and beyond. But this is not a feel-good story. Not to mock or cast aspersions on the noble thing that has brought Henry Darby to national attention in the last few days. For those who missed it, he is the principal of North Charleston High School in North Charleston, South Carolina, where the median household income is $45,000 against a national average of $68,000, and it is said that 90% of the student body lives below the poverty line.

As might be expected from those numbers, life is a struggle for many of Darby’s students. “I get a little emotional,” he told NBC’s “Today” show, “because when you’ve got children you’ve heard sleep under a bridge or a former student and her child that’s sleeping in a car or you go to a parent’s house because there’s problems, and you knock on the door, there are no curtains and you see a mattress on the floor . ... And these people need, and I wasn’t going to say ‘No.’ ”

Darby was flagged to NBC’s attention by Walmart. It seems the principal took a job at the local store, stocking shelves on the overnight shift — 10 p.m to 7 a.m. — three nights a week, in order to make money to help his students and their families. All this, in addition to serving on the county council. The story has since been picked up by CNN, People and various newspapers and TV news outlets. A GoFundMe page set up on his behalf stands at $158,000 at this writing.

It’s a story that made CNN’s Anderson Cooper say, “Wow.” Which was surely apropos. NBC’s Craig Melvin called it “remarkable.” And that, too, is fitting. Indeed, if your heartstrings aren’t tugged hard by this, you might want to see a cardiologist. Darby offers a stirring example of selflessness in action. He embodies the Greco-Christian ideal of agape love. But no, this is not a feel-good story. Because, what does it say about us as a country that he must go to such extraordinary lengths? What does it say about the priorities of the world’s richest nation that its teachers must routinely dip into their own purses and pockets to provide classroom necessities? What does it tell you about the importance we place on our children when government can always find money to give another tax cut to rich people and corporations, yet working-class people must march and protest to secure a living wage?

Before Ronald Reagan passed legislation that pushed mentally ill people into the streets and slashed federal affordable-housing subsidies, homelessness was a subject relegated to history-book chapters on the Great Depression. Now, a high school principal finds that some of his students live under bridges and in cars and while we celebrate his selflessness. Is anyone surprised or even much appalled at those conditions? No. Because that’s normal now. What does that say about us? It says that this is not a feel-good story. It’s a moral-failures story. It’s a wrong-national-priorities story. It’s an income-inequality-rich-getting-richer story. And it’s a what-in-the-world-is-wrong-with-us story, too.

Henry Darby should be spending his nights sleeping. Yet he feels compelled to spend them instead stocking Walmart shelves so that his students have food to eat and roofs over their heads. This story should make us feel many things.

“Good” is not one of them.

To the (school) board and every teacher fighting to stay in remote learning:

Imagine you are a child who is a victim of sexual abuse. It used to be that you would be able to escape your abuser while you were at school and you were working up the courage to tell an adult what was happening to you. Now that has all been stripped away. You don’t have that courage through a screen. You watch your abuser, when they are finished with you, sit out of range of your camera and look at your classmates, trying to decide who is vulnerable. It is likely you will eventually become a victim of sex trafficking and a drug addict to cope with the pain. It would take years and thousands of dollars of counseling to even begin to heal from this trauma, which you probably never will. And today, just like every other day, you must submit to the only adult in your life right now, with no end in sight.

Imagine you are a child who lives with an abusive parent. Your parent’s rage has increased because they gave up their job to stay home with you since you can’t go to school. Finances are tighter than ever before, and tensions are at an all-time high. Even the slightest wrong step results in a painful beating. The bruises aren’t recognizable to anyone because you’re only seen through a 1-by-1-inch screen. It hurts to sit all day because your body is bruised and broken. You think your hand might be fractured from trying to shield yourself but you guess it’s OK because it’s easy to type with the other hand. Your hope is you can go back to school and maybe you won’t be invisible anymore. Someone will see your pain and come to your rescue. But that rescue is nowhere in sight.

Imagine you are a teen struggling with depression. You sit in your room in complete social isolation all day. You think about killing yourself 10 times a day, but there is always a voice in the back of your head that tells you to have hope. Hope that you will return to school and be able to fill your soul with human interaction. The little bit of hope is being stripped away and in your mind there is no end in sight to your isolation so you might as well go through with the ultimate isolation.

Imagine you are a 6-year-old child with a single parent who has to work — without a vaccine — and they can’t afford full-time daycare. You are left home alone to do school by yourself. You can’t tell time so it’s hard to get on your meetings. At lunch it’s too hard to make lunch so you go hungry. You need help with your assignments and a friendly adult face you can look to for comfort but you don’t have those things. Next year you will be illiterate when you go to second grade. You will always be behind in school, and without many prospects for the future you may turn to gangs or drugs because in your mind you don’t have anything else going for you.

Imagine you are a high school athlete from a low-income family. You have dreamed of going to college to make a better life for yourself. Your natural ability has finally made that dream a reality. But now you are forced to give up your dream because there is no one scouting you out, no scholarships coming your way. You know there won’t be money for college and you will take a job just to make ends meet and never go on to realize your true potential. A bright future that you once had has been stripped away from you by the adults that are supposed to put you first.