Q&A with our Executive Director and Co-Founder

Samantha Samarelli, Director of Communications, sat down with SHP’s Co-founder and Executive Director, Dr. Mark Bergel, prior to the launch of the 5 Years or Less initiative

Sam: Going back to 2020, why did you start The Shared Humanity Project?

Mark: I had seen after 20 years that what I was doing was not moving the needle. The same people who came to my previous organization for help in the year 2005 were coming back in the year 2010 and 2015 and were still struggling economically. Band-Aids can be helpful, there is no doubt, but I don’t feel that’s the best we can do. I guess you could say that I saw the writing on the wall for the next ten years, and it was not what I wanted to read. I knew that I either had to overhaul that organization, which would have meant many people I loved losing jobs, or I could just move on myself. And when Katherin mentioned that she would be interested in doing something on a larger scale, the opportunity to work with her made me think we could do something impactful.

Sam: You’ve mentioned to each of us on the team the incredible confidence that you have in Katherin. Can you share more about that since you have worked with so many people over the years?

Mark: That’s a good question because there would not be a Shared Humanity Project without Katherin. For many years I had reached out in the DC region and across the country and was lucky enough to meet and work with people in every sector and at the highest levels. But nobody had the depth of knowledge and the logic in their thought processes that Katherin has. The best opportunity to move the needle certainly lied in working with her.

Sam: Ok, so this campaign we are launching, why is five years the number you think is correct?

Mark: First, any longer than that is disrespectful to people who are in poverty. The disproportionate number of homicides in low-income communities - every day - should be all we need to consider, so not setting a deadline on this is reflective of a small-minded approach to life. Add to that the education failures in so many cities and towns, also grossly disproportionate and across generations in low-income communities, and the crisis screams at you. Those are just two reasons, and similar to the way that we have set goals at times in this country of reducing poverty by 20% in a given number of years, it’s far too little humanity, far too little concern for our fellow human beings.

Second, five years is plenty of time to do a thorough needs assessment of your community, identify how you can address those needs, and implement your solutions. Anything longer than five years is nothing that we should accept.

Sam: Was this always your intention with SHP: to have a five-year plan?

Mark: No, it evolved over the past year out of conversations with team members, individuals in poverty, and professionals whom I trusted and admired. One gentleman, in particular, named Howard Levy, who works for a communications firm called Red Rooster Group, has been talking with me throughout the past five years. He is a tremendous listener, which I suppose is why he is good at his job, and one day he shared that our conversations always made him think of Kennedy’s Moon Shot initiative. So we discussed that a bit more, and I felt that seven years, the time it took for the U.S to put a man on the moon following Kennedy’s pledge that we would do so, was too long. A community that has participation from its residents, and from people in different sectors, can do it in less time. That is what I believe SHP can help to make happen.

So, we combined the two websites we had developed, reviewed all of our research and data, and arrived at this plan. It puts right in front of folks an approach that is easy to use no matter one’s age or experience level.

Sam: Part of my responsibilities includes fundraising for The Shared Humanity Project. I noticed pretty early in my time here that we have not done much in this area. Why is that?

Mark: A major part of the problem when it comes to poverty in the United States has been the emergence of a poverty industrial complex over the last 60 years, and fundraising is part of the problem. I know this first-hand, and I did not want to repeat mistakes that I and others around the country have made by assessing the success of our work by how much money is raised. Obviously it takes money to pay for organizations to function, but it gives me pause when I don’t know exactly how dollars raised are going to solve this problem rather than feeding a symptom-level effort.

With this initiative, I believe we will spend donations quite effectively, so we will do a little more in this area than we have been doing. That’ll help with the work you are doing, and I look forward to it. That said, I’d like to see us and other poverty nonprofits truly go out of business in five years or less. Nobody should be making a career on the backs of people struggling just to get by.