Meet our Fellows

Biff Chaplow: EEqual

Denver, Colorado

Working at the Intersection of Homelessness and Education

Biff Chaplow is a parent, artist, and activist for economic justice. They currently serve as the Executive Director for EEqual, a youth-led nonprofit working to ensure homeless youth have equal access to higher education. EEqual believes housing is a human right, education is a human right, and intergenerational leadership is key to addressing these issues.

EEqual takes a two pronged approach to meet the needs of the students it serves. First, EEqual provides direct resources to those students who are experiencing homelessness. This includes scholarship award programs for university and trade school, mentorship programs, and other resources as needed.

Second, EEqual works to change the conversation surrounding the issue of student homelessness through advocacy and social awareness campaigns. EEqual offers student chapters in schools across the country  and creates social awareness campaigns on social media and elsewhere.

Education is “one clear pathway out of poverty. One youth getting an education can impact generations in a family,” says Chaplow. LGBTQ and POC youth are disproportionally impacted by lack of education.

EEqual is “youth-powered. All twelve staff members are 20 or under and range in age from 15-20. Only 2 are over 30. A percentage of the board is required to be youth. I'm the oldest person by far. I was the youngest person to manage a homeless shelter in Hollywood. I’ve always had the experience of being the youngest. It’s weird to suddenly, at 37, be the oldest,” says Chaplow.

The youthful energy translates into work completed via text message and social media campaigns on TikTok. For Chaplow, the intergenerational leadership offers other lessons. “It means examining what it means to be an equitable organization for people who are young, because the way we do things are not the way that teenagers do things. The industrial nonprofit complex has built systems that are exclusionary to people of certain ages, to young people and people over 60. Young people also experience age discrimination. It is assumed that they don’t have anything to offer. “

EEqual aims to create and amplify conversations around homelessness and poverty, particularly in students. Currently, there are EEqual chapters in 23 schools around the country, focused on addressing poverty locally. Chaplow notes that their goal is to double the number of chapters next year, focusing on the cities of Denver, Chicago and San Francisco.  Students in local chapters work to answer the question “How do you support your homeless peers?”

Scholarships for higher education offer another path forward for students. 31 new scholars were selected this year and many scholarships were renewed. Most scholarships range between one and two thousand dollars a year for up to 4 years. “The point is to help students get past the finish line. They may have funded most of the education but need a little help to get the rest,” according to Chaplow.

About Biff Chaplow

Chaplow grew up in Massachusetts as the second of four children in family that struggled with many of the problems found in the population EEqual serves. “We were pretty poor growing up. My mom left my dad and from then on she was a single mom to all four of us. The initital lens through which I learned to see the world was one of poverty – what it meant to be really poor. It was not being able to join in school field trips because we couldn’t afford them or not getting new clothes. It was learning to see the world through that lens of what for me is now economic justice.”

Chaplow grew up in a Pentecostal Assembly of God Church. “I have really good memories of attending church there. A Pentecostal Church is lively and fun and really passionate. The message I received there was one of love and compassion in the teachings of Jesus.”

Chaplow moved away from the church as they got older. “It became very obvious that the church did not feel like kindness or compassion. I was raised in a church that was very Jesus-centric, but the Christian church did not feel like kindness, compassion or loving our neighbor. There just weren’t many options to go to church where it was open and affirming.”

“For me, entering into adulthood, the things I held dearly to was the experience of being very poor and understanding what injustice exists there and what that really means for people. Add in to that mixture having been raised with strong values – those values of love, compassion and serving other people.”

Chaplow began working as a case manager at a homeless shelter in Hollywood, CA. “It was a shelter for people who were chronically homeless. It was definitely rough. I got to see right away what mental health issues people were facing, the drug issues, violence, and what it meant for marginalized folks to be living on the street. It was very overwhelming at first. I adapted and figured out how to compartmentalize. It’s hard to live in a city like LA where I might meet my friends at a fancy place at the top of a mountain in Malibu, and the next day be sitting in a homeless shelter for work. That dichotomy was a really difficult one to navigate and it’s one I still struggle with.”

Chaplow rose pretty quickly into nonprofit management. “I worked in homeless services and I am by nature an ambitious person. When I saw problems, my instinct was to fix those problems.”

Chaplow and their partner moved to Oregon 10 years ago after adopting two children. Chaplow opted to stop working to stay home with the children, who at the time were one and four. “It was a lovely privilege to be able to stay home with them until they were in kindergarten. But after about five years of staying home, it was an identity crisis. You don’t realize what’s happening until you’re really deep into it.”

After adding a third child to the family, Chaplow was ready for another challenge. “I came across EEqual’s job posting. The job posting said something along the lines of ‘we don’t really care where you got your degree, or if you have one. We care that your values match ours and what your skills are.’ That rang true to me because one of the major issues in economic justice is that we place such value on classist principles as a way of keeping people in poverty.

From the time I was 15, I knew that that was a standard that exists and that it was harmful. Dress code is just one of them. There are dozens of things we do in nonprofits, that have unintentially replicated the harmful structures that exist – that we are trying to break down. And EEqual had already gotten that.”

Chaplow was hired as EEqual’s first executive Director. “I love being in a new organization. You get to invent systems, think about programs, build a welcoming and affirming culture. I love that part.”

Along with their other services, EEqual organizes monthly webinars for youth in college who are experiencing homelessness and poverty. “We know that youth that are living in poverty, especially first generation college students, don’t have the same systems of mentorship and relationships in place that other people whose families have gone to college do. If you’re a student who has grown up poor, you don’t know that you need to file FAFSA every year, you don’t have that leg up. You need a community of people around you to help nurture you, mentor you, support you. That’s what we’re trying to build.”

Profile by Anita Flowers