The challenge

Hazard is an isolated rural town located in the heart of the Appalachian coalfields, where 27 percent of residents live in poverty. Many of them are undereducated, in poor health and dependent on a single industry — coal. Poverty and devastating trailer fires frequently leave families without a roof over their heads. “For decades, people have come to Appalachia to save it,” says Roll. “Since the war on poverty began, people have swooped into rural Appalachia to show the poor people here what was wrong, tell them how to fix it, and then leave.” Yet, the harsh conditions continue — especially for the rural homeless. Because most people associate homelessness with urban settings, few services for the rural homeless exist.


Seeds of commitment

One day in 1980, Roll found herself sitting on the front steps of her Florida apartment, about to be evicted, holding her four month-old son. “It occurred to me at that moment that the world was wrong — there just had to be a better way,” she recalls. Roll found her way. She reconnected with her family, tried but failed to save her marriage, went to school and finally graduated from Miami’s Barry University in 1990. While working for the State of Florida as a social worker in child-support enforcement, she realized how desperate people were for a sense of community. “I must have talked about it too, because my son, who was then 10 years old, reminded me that I had promised him that, when I graduated from college, we would find our community, a place to live and grow up far from the hustle and bustle of Palm Beach County, Florida,” she recalls. “So we moved to this little town in eastern Kentucky called Hazard.”
Her new employer, the Hazard / Perry County Community Ministries, Inc. (H.P.C.C.M.), challenged her to do something about homeless people. Roll accepted the challenge — to find a better way. “My personal sources of strength are within my community, my strong but simple faith, my children (who have exemplified that simple faith every day since their birth), and all of the people I see and work for every day — the ones just looking for some good options so they can make their own good choices,” she says.


Accomplishments

Roll has served as executive director of H.P.C.C.M. since 1991. Her most significant achievement, she believes, is helping her community understand the need for linked services. In order to achieve self-sufficiency, people need decent and affordable housing — but they also need high-quality, affordable childcare, good-paying jobs and decent health care. “I don’t accept the idea that we can discuss opening a new factory without addressing child care,” says Roll. “It all goes together.” In just two years, she brought the community together to create Comer Haven Crisis Center, a homeless shelter two blocks from City Hall. Today, that serves more than 1,500 people annually — providing shelter, food and family support services. H.P.C.C.M. has also created a support program for families at risk of becoming homeless, and opened three new child-care centers. “Through community organizing and building partnerships, we have developed one of the most highly regarded early childhood programs in the state. Our centers are locally controlled, family oriented and community based. These children are going to school ready to learn,” she says. Under Roll’s direction, H.P.C.C.M developed a transitional housing program that provides a continuum of services for families transitioning from homelessness to self sufficiency, and even to home ownership. Over the past three years, a tenant based rental-assistance program has housed more than 25 homeless families. Roll’s work has changed Kentucky policies; as a result of the example set by her organization, the state now distributes all non entitlement emergency shelter money to rural areas that have built their own shelter facilities and created continuums of care. With Roll’s guidance, the Homeless and Housing Coalition of Kentucky promoted the creation of the Kentucky Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

Most recently, H.P.C.C.M. gained national recognition for the Southeast Kentucky Community Access Program (SKYCAP), a rural demonstration and evaluation program funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and launched in 2000. The goal of this program is to improve access to health care, social services and housing through a partnership of more than 50 local providers. As a result of this innovative program, Gerry participates in national training programs to encourage other communities to adopt similar efforts.


Her leadership style

“Building community may be personal, but it’s contagious,” says Roll. “Once you start, it spreads like wildfire.” Roll lights the match. She assembles diverse income groups to help create the Continuum of Care process; together they articulate the community’s priorities. Because Hazard has a strong church base, Roll uses places of worship as venues for public discussions about social issues. And as a member of the industrial planning board, she reminds community leaders about the needs of low income people. Roll insists that distribution of state and federal monies should be an open process and include a wide variety of stakeholders. Whether she’s at a meeting, a conference, or a grocery store, she is able to convince people that they need to be part of the solution. “I have always had grandiose dreams about the way things ought to be,” Roll says. “I tend to ask a lot of questions. Why do we send our homeless people to the city for services? Why can’t we have the best child-care centers? Why are we settling for mediocre health care? I am not afraid of what anybody’s answer is because it takes everybody’s answer to come up with the whole solution. Once the questions are on the table, the answers and solutions start coming from within the community. Then we all roll up our sleeves, share a lot of homemade goodies, and get to work. I can’t do it, you can’t do it, but we can — just watch us.”


The future

Her central leadership challenge is to maintain the system she and others have created over the past decade. “I am preparing for that by constantly reminding my community and myself that it’s not all about me, it’s about us. Together we built it, and together we will sustain it,” Roll says. She is developing new leadership among the staff of Community Ministries and in the community at large through the board of directors and other partners. “In five years I want to be right here in Hazard, Kentucky, continuing to build good systems that work, offering people good options so they can make good choices.” She does, however, have a more global vision. “Brain drain and the flight of all of our intellectual capital are killing rural communities across the nation. At the same time, urban areas are struggling to regain what they lost long ago -- a sense of community,” she says. “Our children believe that they must move to huge cities to get good jobs and prosper. I can’t think of a better way to have a global impact than to stay right where I am and continue to raise the bar for other small communities. If we set an example for other small towns, perhaps their youth will also see value in coming home to live and raise families.”


More about Gerry Roll

“She doesn’t take ownership or credit. She listens to people. She won’t be territorial. She’s not after glory. She’s willing to take everyone’s ideas. It’s important to her to get the best thinking, not just her own. Whether it’s barriers to access, or any key problem, she’s always looking for solutions, no matter whose they are. And, yes, she’s always developing other leaders. She doesn’t stand over you and say how she wants it done. She lets other people have the creativity to do it their way and then she backs them up.”
— Fran Feltner, Program Director, Community Access Program, University of Kentucky Center for Rural Health