Cash Assistance

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  Walking

  Mother: Whitney H

  "I have a job and I’m barely making it, so imagine how many people walking around hungry, with a smile, trying to fake it." 
  

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  Peace At Work

  Mother: Whitney H

  "You have to make peace. I feel you have to make peace because if you don’t then you’ll be caught up out here with everything else that’s going on around you. You have to learn how to take yourself outta that and keep your own peace ‘cause if not you’re not gonna have any peace. In reality we don’t [have peace]. The only peace we may have is when we are asleep or when we are in our own homes. But then you still have bullets flying through the windows."

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  Can i have something to eat?

  Mother: Imani S

  “He was asking the case worker for something to eat.  I don’t have child care, so I have to take him to my appointments.  If he was in day care I wouldn’t have to have lugged him early in the morning to an appointment to the welfare office to try to get food stamps and medical coverage.  I can’t help it if my baby’s hungry.  I was thinking ‘I’m not going to lie to you miss, he’s hungry.’”

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  City Hall at Night

  Mother: Imani S

  "I was on my way to the overtime job that I was doing when I got my food stamps cut off.  They had called me to work there for one day.  So, I was thinking to myself, “Well, if I go down here this one day, are they going cut my food stamps off?  I really didn’t know what to do.  At the time I was walking through there, it made me think, “Was I going to get cut off again?” What kind of programs can the City do to help us stay on the food stamp program when we do extra work?  I don’t think it’s fair for us to get reprimanded for doing something positive.  That’s why I chose that picture."

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  Riding the bus

  Mother: Janelle R

  It has [been hard finding a job, and] everybody’s blaming it on the economy. But there’s plenty of jobs out there…  the reason why I know that I haven’t found a job yet is because I haven’t been able to go out [to job sites] because of my money situation. ‘Cause I know if I spend two dollars [on bus fare] I might need that for Pampers…

   

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  At work

  Mother: Marinette R

  "I found this security job on my own. I've always found jobs on my own because the welfare-to-work programs they send you to they never work for me. It’s kind of crazy because you sit there and they just tell you a bunch of stuff about how you have to have your hair. Like one day they put me to work there and they told me I needed a resume done. I don’t know how to mess with a computer so they told this lady, and she just puts me at the computer and leaves.She didn’t even help me. I got so stressed I left. They told me that if you leave and you never come back that you get sanctioned."

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  City of brotherly love

  Mother: Tangela F

  When I took that picture I was thinking that they say Philadelphia’s the City of Brotherly Love. But if it’s the City of Brotherly Love why can't anybody even get a job in this city? The people that are really trying to get a job can’t get one. 

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  2 Tokens for One Week

  Mother: Joanna C

  "I take the bus to work. That’s why I had the picture of the two bus tokens. My sad, little tokens, because it was these two tokens that I had left for three more days of getting to work. Welfare said they couldn’t give me any more bus fare money because they already gave it to me. But of course, my priority is to feed my kids. I know that going to the job is going to pay me eventually, but I can’t let them starve all week long. So, I’m going to use that money to feed them first."

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  Stacks of Paper

  Mother: Joanna C

  "It never ends because I got through one stack of papers to file like that this week. I have another stack that big in a drawer, plus the lady keeps coming and bringing more and more paperwork.  I’m like, how the heck am I going to get through all this paperwork? My supervisor said, 'Oh no, you’re not going to get through it. You’re never gonna finish and it’s never going to be gone.'"

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  Computers

  Mother: Nadja R
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  Talking and Solitaire

  Mother: Nadja R
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  Working

  Mother: Nadja R
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  Child Care

  Mother: Mona H