12 People You Need to Know in 2016: Linda Ramey-Greiwe

There are some issues that keep Linda Ramey-Greiwe awake at night, and she thinks others should be awake, too.

One of them is the number of children living in poverty.

“We talk about reducing it, but first we have to get it to level off,” says the executive director of Care to Learn.

According to the 2015 Community Focus Report, first issued in 2004, more than half of children in Springfield Public Schools receive free or reduced lunches, and Springfield has surpassed St. Louis as the Missouri city with the lowest per capita income and the highest percentage of families in poverty.

That means children show up at school with unaddressed issues or they don’t show up at all. Care to Learn meets immediate needs with real remedies.

Much of Ramey-Greiwe’s interest in combating poverty was stirred by serving on the Impacting Poverty Commission and the Mayor’s Commission for Children. After 28 years with Gannett Co. Inc. – including as president and publisher of the Springfield News-Leader until 2014 – Ramey-Greiwe sought a change. She joined the nonprofit in October, succeeding Morey Mechlin, the nonprofit’s first and only executive director since its 2009 founding.

“I just felt like I was being called to do more and this opportunity came up,” Ramey-Greiwe says, noting while at the News-Leader she supported its Every Child poverty series that examined red-flag issues in the community. Springfield is unique in that low unemployment and high poverty co-exist, with the low cost of living and affordable home prices obscuring the high cost of renting.

Care to Learn has 24 chapters and has received requests from Colorado and Wisconsin, but currently is focused on Missouri. Ramey-Greiwe says the nonprofit has a solid business model: The superintendent must be on board; a community liaison facilitates requests; and at least three people from the community must commit to fundraising.

“The money is raised from the community for the community,” she says.

Children in low-income families are more likely to miss school, so the priority is filling gaps – eyeglasses, hearing aids, clothing, a tank of gas – so children are in school the next day. Focus prevents mission creep, Ramey-Greiwe says.

“We are clear with our donors that this is health, hunger and hygiene, and we want to honor that,” she says.

Ramey-Greiwe admits the effects of poverty can be depressing. “But when you see the work we are doing, that can be really rewarding,” she says. “And you don’t ignore it because it can be depressing.”

She is excited about Community Foundation of the Ozarks’ upcoming Northwest Project, an effort to attack poverty and its attendant issues in northwest Springfield.  The Northwest Project seeks to move families into a sustainable financial state.

“If everybody does something, there are a lot of ways we can make a difference,” Ramey-Greiwe says.