Breaking Barriers: M-Power Ministries gives clients the tools they need to change their lives

About 92,000 people in the Birmingham area are functionally illiterate, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Not only that, but about 60,000 people in Jefferson County lack health insurance and cannot get the care they need, according to staffers at M-Power Ministries in Avondale.

But M-Power, a faith-based nonprofit, is working to address these chronic problems.

At its Education Center, M-Power offers basic literacy programs, GED preparation and career-readiness programs.

M-Power also operates a free medical clinic that provides walk-in, primary and specialty care to thousands of Jefferson County residents annually.

The two activities have a common purpose: to break down the academic and physical barriers that make it difficult for so many low-income people in the area to dramatically improve their lives and economic prospects.

It’s gratifying for M-Power staffers to help provide their clients with “the opportunity and skills they need to break the cycle of poverty,” said Dalton Smith, the nonprofit’s executive director.

M-Power’s mission has a spiritual core, said Nick Dietschweiler, who serves as the patient registrar at the medical clinic. “It gives you an opportunity to serve the Lord and love the people he’s created,” he said.

The recent 20th anniversary was “a culmination of a lot of people who have worked very hard to try to serve this community,” said Thomas Smith, executive director of the Education Center at M-Power.

The nonprofit celebrated the anniversary by hosting the Taste for the 20th fundraiser at The Theodore events space in Lakeview in October.

There have been a lot of changes at M-Power in the five years Thomas Smith has worked there, he said.

“We are serving more and more people and taking care of them,” he said.

Dalton Smith, a Birmingham native, became M-Power’s executive director in 2016. Prior to that, he was a partner at Scout Branding.

M-Power is able to accomplish a lot with a small core staff of full and part-time employees, Dalton Smith said.

“We’re the hub, and the spokes are the hundreds of volunteers,” he said. “We can use a lot of the skills of the community.”

There are about 120 volunteers on the education side, many of them college professors or retired teachers. The medical clinic has more than 100 volunteers, including doctors and nurses.

M-Power is “a broad spectrum group” with a significant geographic reach, Dalton Smith said. “We touch every zip code in the metro area.”

The nonprofit is supported by numerous churches, businesses and individuals, he said.

M-Power is also “pretty big on pursuing data” that helps it demonstrate that the nonprofit’s efforts are bearing fruit, Dalton Smith said.

It’s “gratifying to do something that we can measure the results and know that we are actually accomplishing something,” he said.

There are both humanitarian and economic reasons to operate the health clinic, Dietschweiler said.

Without health insurance, many patients have no choice but to go to the emergency room when they are sick. This means they are “not getting the care they need, not the personalized care that a primary care doctor can give,” Dietschweiler said.

Many of the patients treated at M-Power are dealing with chronic illnesses that make it difficult for them to be productive, meaning they may lose their jobs or be unable to find jobs and therefore lack health insurance benefits, Dietschweiler said.

The clinic at M-Power “gives them a chance to get back on their feet and get to where they can maintain their health even though they have a chronic illness so that they can regain employment,” Dietschweiler said.

The M-Power education staffers have done pedagogical research to make their adult curriculum and teaching methods as effective as possible, Thomas Smith said.

One goal is to “determine the deficiencies we see in the students in their cognitive abilities,” he said.

The Education Center takes advantage of the theory of prior knowledge, Thomas Smith said.

“We go to the last thing we know that the student understands … and we teach them forward as we discover what their problems are,” he said. “There might be one thing that they did not understand in the classroom, and our school system just zips by.”

Once students are properly assessed, “they zoom through the educational process,” Thomas Smith said.

The students at M-Power “are passing and getting their GED, which is now harder than graduating from high school,” said Thomas Smith, noting that more than half of the GED consists of algebra and trigonometry.

“We are doing things that are not being done anywhere else that I’m aware of,” he said.

In the new decade, M-Power would like to grow the reach of its programs, Dalton Smith said. “We have a model that has a proven track record of helping individuals get their GEDs, learn to read and obtain workforce skills,” he said. “We’d just like to see this expand to serve more and more people in the next three to five years.”

That growth is occurring, Thomas Smith said.

“When I started here we had eight students who finished a semester,” he said. “We had 19 instructors … Last year we served 292 students.”

The nonprofit would like to “formalize and grow” its ability to find jobs for its graduates, Dalton Smith said.

He also noted many of the people who come to M-Power for help are already working. “A lot of the people who come to our medical clinic… may be working two jobs but don’t have benefits, including health care,” he said.

Many of the people who come to M-Power for help are in poverty “because they inherited that, and the ones who come here are trying to get out of it,” Thomas Smith said.

“As Christians and human beings, we owe them to try to help them through the process,” he said.

Working at M-Power is an opportunity for staff to learn more about the challenges that low-income people face, Dietschweiler said.

“You get to see a lot of things you don’t see if you don’t come through the doors here,” he said. “You see people living in their cars who have nothing trying to seek a better life.”

The M-Power staffers are also privileged to be “witnesses to people changing their history, and that’s the greatest part of all of it,” he said.

For more information, go to mpowerministries.org.