Churches Help Edison Aid the Poor

Southern California Edison has enlisted the help of an unlikely ally--churches--to sign up thousands of low-income customers for hefty discounts on rising utility bills.

In just a few months, pastors, priests and church volunteers have become Edison’s most effective tool in telling the poor about a state-mandated program that offers 20% off electric bills and exemptions from skyrocketing rate increases.

Refugio Gomez, 62, a part-time janitor, signed up for the program last month at Our Lady of Victory in Compton, the church where he works. Since then, his monthly electric bill has been cut from $48 to $18.

“I hadn’t heard about the program before,” Gomez said. “[Church volunteers] helped me with the forms.”

The pioneer faith-based program began with 22 Orange County Catholic churches in April and now is being rolled out throughout Southern California. Edison employees will be at five churches in the South Bay this weekend.

The utility is concentrating its efforts initially in Catholic and African-American churches, primarily because of their large congregations and, in the case of the Catholics, their large-scale organizations. But Edison officials say they plan to use a wide range of religious organizations, including synagogues, mosques and temples, before the campaign ends in the fall.

“It’s a really fantastic way to get the word out,” said Pastor Steve Overton, who had Edison workers hand out information Sunday at his Christian Chapel Foursquare Church in Moreno Valley. “The church is called to help the poor. We’re doing what the Lord wants us to do.”

Church leaders say they are aware that their endorsement of an Edison program can produce a halo effect for the besieged company. But getting lower electric rates for their low-income congregants overrides those concerns.

“We’re not doing this to help Southern California Edison,” said Jaime Soto, auxiliary bishop for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange. “We’re doing this to help our parishioners.”

About 62% of an estimated 1 million eligible customers participate in the discount program started by the state Public Utilities Commission in 1989, Edison officials said. A family of four must earn less than $31,100 a year to be eligible for the program, which is also offered by the Southern California Gas Co.

Religious institutions based in low-income areas have been able to knock down barriers that have hindered Edison’s past efforts to reach out to the poor: suspicion from recent immigrants, language and cultural differences, and ineffective marketing campaigns.

When the energy crisis began, Frank Quevedo, an Edison vice president, decided religious organizations offered the best chance to reach customers who would suffer the most from rising electric bills.

He met with Soto, who provided demographic information from the diocese’s 56 parishes.

“He knew the [community] in a way we couldn’t,” Quevedo said. “He knew which churches had the most seniors, low-income parishioners, limited-English speakers. We had great results.”

Energy Crisis Prompts Change in Church Policy

The Catholic church sometimes allows other information to be distributed at Mass, but it usually revolves around health programs, immigration issues and education on voter registration.

“We generally do not do business with business,” Soto said. “But the extent of the energy crisis and its impact on the poor made me rethink that policy. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how many people we’ve reached.”

A priest’s endorsement of Edison’s discount program, plus church volunteers helping fellow congregants fill out Edison forms, has proven far more effective than inserting fliers in monthly bills or trying to engage shoppers outside retail malls.

In Orange County, more than 1,000 church-going customers took advantage of the discount in a single day. At Compton’s Our Lady of Victory, more than 200 congregants joined the program. Edison also had handed out 80,000 sign-up forms that parishioners have taken home.

At a booth in a Los Angeles shopping center, Edison workers earlier this month signed up only two dozen customers in a half-day of work.

Edison workers volunteer time on Sundays to pass out information at churches. More than 100 employees turned out on a single Sunday in April to volunteer at nearly two dozen sites in Orange County.

“It’s really a humbling experience for us,” said Rocio Contreras, a board member of the company’s Latino employees association. “What was really neat was to have the priests and fathers there, letting the parishioners know who we are and why we were there. That made a difference.”

Churches are a natural go-between wary immigrants and large institutions that provide relief services, said John Wilcox, chair of religious studies and director for the Center for Professional Ethics at Manhattan College in Riverdale, N.Y.

“It’s really using churches in an area where they’re already very effective,” he said. “My only concern would be that the church needs to be an honest broker. The church probably has the greatest amount of trust among the poor. [Immigrants] are so vulnerable.”