Pio Decimo Center

Pio Decimo Receives Honors

Tucson, Arizona’s Pio Decimo Center has recently received a number of honors. Catholic Charities and the Annie E. Casey Foundation presented Pio Decimo with a national award recognizing the excellence of their family strengthening programs. These programs support healthy family relationships, improve family financial situations by educating them on how to build assets, and enhance the communities where families live. In addition, Pio Decimo’s child education program received accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children. This was awarded for the successful implementation of rigorous standards of care, education, and operation and indicates that Pio Decimo is meeting very high standards of child education.

History and Services

These awards point to the high level of service that the Pio Decimo Center, a member of Catholic Community Services, has been offering to residents in Tucson and Pima County for the last 60 years. Pio Decimo offers a wide range of services to meet the needs of children, adults, seniors, and families. These services include child care programs, after school programs, senior housing, transitional housing for the homeless, gang prevention, emergency support services, and a range of asset building services.

Asset Building Services

Asset building services include financial education, free tax preparation, Individual Development Accounts (IDAs), and assistance with home down payments. Financial education workshops run by Pio Decimo focus on basic budgeting and credit repair, and they also hold workshops providing information on long-term savings vehicles. Pio Decimo’s IDA program focuses on first time homebuyers, those wanting to start a small business, and those striving to get an education. Pio Decimo also leads an Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Coalition, which hosted nine tax sites in 2008, and partnered with United Way of Tucson, who ran another 14 sites. In addition to United Way, key partners include Nogales Community Development Corporation, the City of Yuma, City of Nogales, and Arizona Community Foundation and their affiliates, as well as local financial institutions. When the VITA program began five years ago, they had four sites and did about 400 returns. During the last tax season, Pio Decimo volunteers and staff completed roughly 3,500 returns at their nine sites. Over the years, they have also begun to incorporate more asset-building services into their sites. In addition to tax preparation, they now offer benefits screenings, options for opening checking and savings accounts, and IDA accounts.

IDA Program

A Pio Decimo IDA participant and her family. They were able to purchase their first home in June, 2008.

When you look at numbers and growth, Pio Decimo’s most successful asset development program has been their VITA program. However, when you look at really creating change in a community, their most successful program is their IDA program. This program really promotes a change in financial habits, and encourages people to save towards long-term goals. 46 people have purchased homes for the first time through Pio Decimo’s IDA program. An additional five people have started business, and 12 have been able to begin school. This is an amazing success rate for a program that began only five years ago.

Pio Decimo’s Clients

Pio Decimo’s typical client is rural, low-income, and Hispanic. Working with this population poses some challenges. 75% of the population Pio Decimo serves lives in rural areas. People living in rural Arizona face a high rate of unemployment as compared those in the region who live in urban areas. They also have fewer transportation options, which limits their abilities to seek out employment and the services of agencies that can help them. Furthermore, there are fewer community agencies to serve the low-income in rural areas, and those that do exist face difficult funding climates, as rural programs are often the first to be cut by funders.

The Hispanic population in the area also faces unique challenges. A state ordinance recently went into affect in Arizona that fines employers who hire illegal immigrants. In addition, there is another law that prohibits the use of state funds to help illegal immigrants. This has created a situation where a lot of Hispanic immigrants are unemployed and need help, but have trouble accessing the help they need. Community agencies have had to cut the services they can offer, and in many cases are reluctant to help the immigrant population at all for fear of loss of funding. It is a cycle that is extremely difficult to break.

Working Together to Solve Problems

Pio Decimo is working to address the unique challenges facing their rural, low-income, and Hispanic clients. One way they are doing this is through the Frontera Asset Building Network (FABN). Pio Decimo is a member of FABN, a network of organizations in the Southwest Border region that are working to address the asset building needs of the low-income population there. Pio Decimo has also been working with churches, community foundations, and organizations that operate in the Tucson area to find ways to address the needs of their client population. By working together with other community agencies, and building strong partnerships, Pio Decimo Center will be able to continue and expand their award winning services within their community, and provide help to the people who need it most.