Community Highlight: Diane Evans

Welcome to our Community Highlight series. Over the next few months, we’ll be sharing stories from community members who pave the way with their advocacy, organizing, and determination to create change. First up, Diane Evans is an advocate for TANF, domestic violence survivors, parents and children, who leads with faith and purpose at the wheel.

Diane Evans is a Poverty Action community member, advocate, spiritual advisor and mother who lives with her four children in Puyallup, WA. As a member of a military family, Diane was born in Japan and traveled frequently during her childhood. While her family was religiously diverse, she was surrounded at an early age by Buddhist practices while living in Japan, and also draws connections to her family’s Indigenous and Mexican heritage.

Diane got involved in grassroots community organizing in 2020. After fleeing domestic violence with her children, Diane received support from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program to help meet her and her families basic needs. However, the Covid pandemic was especially devastating for low-income families, with disorganized aid efforts and insufficient social supports. Diane discovered that the government was shipping truckloads of perishable food to rural communities as aid, with no plans in place for storage or distribution. She started a food bank from her garage, organizing the distribution of this lifeline food to over 250 families per week.

Since then, Diane’s advocacy and community leadership have only grown. This year she testified on TANF Time Limit Extensions front of the WA State Human Services Committee. Diane explains that advocacy is like parenting – every day there’s something to be grateful for, but you don’t always get the validation right away. Sometimes, it takes a while to come back around.

Recent federal cuts to crucial services like Medicaid, SNAP, and TANF are weighing heavily on many advocates’ minds. Diane shares that without access to these services, people will need to completely change their way of life and turn towards community. Of particular concern to her are programs for parents and youth, which have taken significant hits in the past several years – both federal and private programs for teens are some of the first to go in the face of tight budgets. In response, Diane is working to create a support group for single parents navigating preteen aggression, filling the gap left by a state-run program that ended during the pandemic.

For the past several years, Diane has been growing her own business as a spiritual coach and medium. Spirituality is one of the major forces in her life – she shares that this spiritual connection is her guide through difficulty and towards healing. Growing her business from small talks to packed rooms has demonstrated the profound difference she’s making in people’s lives – reminding them about their own innate power to heal and transform, alchemizing pain into ripples of change for themselves and others.

Looking ahead, Diane hopes to go back to school for psychology and become a peer advocate. A longer term dream is setting up a shared plot of land for single parent families to live together. As a community leader who works tirelessly for good, she offers a powerful reminder: “Pride, ego and fear keep us from what we’re capable of. Don’t doubt your own capability to walk, to heal, to grow, and to be a better person. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done in the past…You can help, you can heal, you can make policy changes. You can truly make a difference, not only in your children’s lives, or in your families – there is someone who needs you.” 

Gratitude to Diane Evans for her community contributions and for getting our Community Highlight series off to a strong start! Interested in sharing your story and helping to change the narrative around poverty? Reach out to celestel@povertyaction.org.