The following is an excerpt from Pennsylvania Senator Robert Wonderling’s book, “Talking PA: 21 Conversation for the 21^st Century.” In this chapter, Senator Wonderling discusses an encounter he had with Delia Marrero, an NCC student and a participant in the New Choices/New Options Program. Senator Rob Wonderling was elected to his first term in the Pennsylvania Senate in November 2002 and represents the 24th district which includes parts of Bucks, Lehigh, Montgomery, and Northampton Counties.

A Mom's Fresh Start

One of the challenges of being a public servant is that you can never truly put yourself in someone else's shoes. As hard as you try to understand the challenges and hardships various constituents are facing, if you haven't experienced them directly - in all their complexity and with all their frustration - you cannot fully appreciate what they are going through.

I consider myself very fortunate to have been raised in a solid, middle-class family by two loving and involved parents. I know, however, that many of the people I serve did not have that same experience, and that their lives are harder, and often their standard of living less, because of it. I will be the first to admit that while I understand on an intellectual level many of the problems facing the poor, for example, I don't fully appreciate the challenges the poor face every day because I have never lived them.

As a politician, those in my profession who claim to fully empathize with people in whose shoes they have never walked bother me. How can I ever understand how hard it is to be a 21-year-old single mother of two toddlers who lacks the skills to get a good job and for whom just providing the basic necessities of life is an ongoing struggle? I can't.

Now that doesn't mean I shouldn't try; in fact, it means I should try harder than I do to understand their needs. That's why, when I met with Delia Marrero, a woman who meets the description I outlined above, I wanted to try to put myself in her shoes, if just for a little while.

Delia is a participant in Pennsylvania's Keystone Education Yields Success (KEYS) program. KEYS is a community college-based initiative that serves welfare recipients who enroll in a career-specific associate degree or credit bearing certificate at one of Pennsylvania's 14 community colleges.

KEYS is designed to help students while they acquire the learning and skills they need to find good jobs that will allow them to move from dependency to independence. It provides students such services as tutoring, financial aid, and career counseling. Delia is one of about 1,700 students enrolled in the KEYS program.

The need for programs like KEYS is acute. Pennsylvania is home to more than 500,000 households headed by single moms. On average, single-earner households earn just 58 percent of what two-parent households earn, even though the vast majority of single heads of household work full-time.

Delia and I met on a warm summer day in the two-and-a-half room apartment in South Bethlehem she shares with her two daughters, three-year-old Leilanni and two-year-old Dayanara.

The girls' grandmother was looking after them at her home, as she often does when Delia is at work or school. Even though the girls weren't home, I could see that while this apartment was certainly modest and modestly furnished, it was clearly filled with a mother's love.

When we sat down to talk, Delia reminded me that this was not the first time we had met. We had, in fact, made one another's acquaintance several months earlier, when a delegation of New Choices New Options students from Northampton Community College came to Harrisburg to share their stories with some of the members of the legislature.

I had to admit to Delia that I did not remember meeting her specifically that day, but I also had to tell her that the group she was with made a huge impression on me. I vividly recall the power of their stories; their determination to make better lives for themselves; the enormity of the challenges they faced; the pride they felt in their effort and in their progress. By the time we were done, every one of us had tears in our eyes.

But that experience was nothing compared with what I felt actually being there in Delia's apartment and seeing first-hand just how hard she is working and how committed she is to succeeding through the KEYS program.

Delia's goals may seem modest to those of us who have been blessed with a healthy portion of this world's goods. We take for granted things Delia is still aspiring to achieve: living in a place where she can feel free from fear of crime; having easy access to good parks and recreational activities for her children; being able to give her girls their own bedroom.

But the spirit with which she is pursuing a better life is anything but modest. She is as driven as any hedge fund manager, professional athlete, or ambitious politician - and the obstacles she faces are every bit as formidable, and perhaps even more so.

There's no doubt that the challenges Delia faces are, in some measure, the result of some of the choices she's made. She would be the first to tell you that. She was still in high school when she became pregnant with her first child and therefore she didn't complete her high school education (although she later did get her GED). Leaving school was not a good choice.

But rather than simply blame bad luck or fate for the consequences of the choices she's made in the past, Delia is making some new choices about her life - and she is working hard to make them work for her and her children. I came away from my time with her with tremendous respect for her spirit, her work ethic, and her optimism for the future. She is an inspiration.

I also came away somewhat troubled, though, by ways in which our bureaucratic systems can make it even harder for people who are already working hard to improve themselves despite the many obstacles their circumstances put in their way.

Delia told me that every week she has to turn in a complete schedule of every hour she worked, every hour she spent in class, every hour she spent studying - and then at the end of the month, she has to do the same thing all over again. As Delia explained it to me, "it kind of gets time consuming when I have papers to do, when I have studying to do, when I have reading to do."

I understand the need to ensure that the KEYS participants are actually going to school, but in cases where a student is getting good grades (Delia, for example, is pulling a 3.54 GPA), perhaps the need for such excessive documentation could be relaxed, so that students who are working hard and getting results can spend their time more constructively.

That applies across the social services delivery system. It has become unnecessarily complicated and too frequently does not treat the people who rely on it with the dignity and respect every Pennsylvanian deserves. In addition, Pennsylvania's social welfare programs are too often treated as political footballs at campaign time, with the issues oversimplified and entrenched special interests creating heroes or villains depending on whether a candidate wants to either expand the system or reform it.

One sure way to constructively refocus the debate would be if more policymakers took the time to actually see how the Commonwealth's various programs are actually affecting the lives of the people they serve. These are not abstract issues; these are people issues and attention must be paid to the people they impact.

I don't think for a minute that spending an hour or two with someone like Delia Marrero is the same as actually living the life she and her children live. But I do know this: it has increased my sensitivity to the needs of Pennsylvania's least fortunate residents and it has heightened my respect for just how hard so many of them are working to improve their lives and the lives of their families.

As policymakers, we owe them our best effort to make certain that our best intentions are not inadvertently erecting unnecessary roadblocks and that we are effectively and efficiently providing the help and support they need as they seek to make the leap from dependence to independence.