Foundations for Social Change

Voices of the Community

"There's still a lot of public resistance to the idea of giving people in homelessness cash, because, the public doesn't trust people in poverty or people in homelessness, I think that has to be corrected and addressed" - Dr. Jiaying Zhao

One of the topics we have focused on through our special Covid-19 series is our unhoused neighbors' lives by organizations and governments experimenting with providing cash transfers to unhoused community members. We are finishing up our special series on Covid-19’s impact on our nonprofits, small businesses, and local governments with this very informative and insightful interview with Foundations for Social Change. Foundations for Social Change were the first organization in North America to develop a research project to study the impact on our unhoused neighbors' lives by providing cash transfers to un-housed community members.

In this episode, we feature the voices of the Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of Psychology Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia Dr. Jiaying Zhao, along with the Director of the New Leaf Project Heather Hay and the LEAP Co-Chair and Peer Coordinator Ray Bonnetrouge

To review the first study and to find out more and support the work of Foundations For Social Change please go to for social change dot org

You can find out more about the work of nonprofits working with our unhoused neighbors featured over the last 3 years in this series by going to our Covid-19 and San Francisco Nonprofits series.

And to find out more information about the first program to provide cash transfers to community members in the United States the City of Stockton please go to our Stockton’s Rise From Bankruptcy and go to Episode 12 The Rose that Grew from Concrete

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Delve deeper into our Voices of the Community Series: explore episodes, speakers, organizations, and resources on our dedicated page. Watch and learn from all five series now!