An annual event in Dayton aimed to bring together people to have meaningful conversations about personal experiences related to poverty.
The program, called "At The Table," is held by Springfield nonprofit Think Tank and is designed to tackle issues within the community and build solutions through conversations.
This year, these Think Tank conversations were held not only in Dayton, but also across the nation in Colorado, Alabama and Georgia.
The executive director of Think Tank, Marlo Fox, said working with national partners is vital to the work they do.
"We've done training and equipping work now for many years and so we just reached out and said, 'Would you share this vision with us, this at the table day that we're inviting people from all across our country to sit down with people that you may not normally get to sit down with,'" she said. "And just for the purposes of hearing their story and making connections and dreaming together of what your community could look like. And so they embraced that. "
Pairs of two sat at tables and each duo had 20 minutes to discuss their experiences with poverty and find solutions. After their time was up, attendees rotated to a new table to hear more stories and come up with solutions.
"When we talk about our common concerns in a given city; poverty, incarceration and addiction, we oftentimes have a tendency to talk about those things as issues or even kind of villainize people that have inhabited those challenges," Fox said. "And so when we can actually sit down and hear people's stories, we realize how layered they are, we realize how resilient people are, and we realize, like we have tons of opportunities to partner together to pursue these solutions together."
Rameka Smith attended as part of the Change Leader Alliance. She said engaging in conversations about her own experiences can help give future generations a chance to break free from the generational poverty that she experienced.
“If I get out, and I get out and I run away and I never look back, then the next little girl like me has to go through all the same things I went through to get to the same spot I'm in,” she said.
Smith said she is also trying assist the community in the food desert she grew up in.
"My lived experience that I typically talk about here is in generational poverty and welfare. And so very often not having access to food, going hungry very often. And I also even currently I work in the community that I was born and raised in, the community of Winton Hills," she said. "We are a food desert and we are actually putting together a food initiative right now to provide access to food for residents in the community."
Fox said the organization is hopeful that attendees will take what they learn from these conversations and make changes in their own communities.
“Once people take a step to do that their personal lives are enriched and our communities are going to get stronger and we're going to break down walls that have a tendency to divide us,” she said.
For more information about the Think Tank, visit thinktank-inc.org.
