Welcome and Overview .mp4 

Welcome and Overview.wmv

The Circles Campaign is a national effort involving forty communities and 1000 families who are working to get out of poverty. Each family is supported by two to five people from the community (allies) to pursue their goals. In each community, the public is engaged in a richer dialogue and planning process to address poverty. The process is led by families experiencing poverty and their allies. The Campaign partners include: Move the Mountain, aha!Process, Inc. Wider Opportunities for Women, The Charitable Giving Resource Center, and The Wilder Research Group.

With the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as No Child Left Behind, up for reauthorization by congress, educators across the country are making their voices heard. Nowhere is this truer than in rural America. See how one size fits all education policy can impact geographically isolated school districts and learn the changes being sought to improve this legislation for rural schools. (Mary) Despite policy-makers across the country discussing the importance of investing in American’s future, children and families are receiving a declining amount of federal spending. Many programs that are vital to children, especially programs vital to poor children, are inadequately funded. These include programs like Medicaid, SCHIP, food stamps, child support enforcement, child-care supports and others. Learn about tackling these issues at the state and federal levels. (Havi)

An overview of the comprehensive planning for, and re-development of, a crime-ridden densely populated neighborhood in Harrisburg, PA, will be presented.

Indicators of wealth and health are substantially higher today than historically. They are substantially higher in the developed world than in the underdeveloped world. These differences can be attributed to the accumulation and application of knowledge. The successful application of knowledge appears to depend on moral, mental, and institutional development. Participants will be invited to think about what this implies for anti-poverty strategy.

Recent actions in Congress have prompted states to re-shape their Medicaid Programs by rationing services and taking other actions. Some people think that the states are taking the lead on designing the health care system for the future. Learn about innovative approaches that states have taken to deal with cuts in Medicaid. Find out about the SCHIP reauthorization.

Catholic Charities USA worked with all other Catholic organizations to create a plan to reduce poverty by 50% by the year 2020. This workshop will describe the process by which the plan was produced, the content of the plan, and the methods that Catholic Charities and other organizations are using to implement the plan.

There is action at the state level in several states to address poverty in more formal and more visible ways. Learn what is happening in Minnesota, New Mexico, California and Missouri.

These are two possible models for national goals, accountability measures and strategies. The Oregon Progress Board was created in 1989 to be the steward of the state strategic plan, Oregon Shines. The Progress Board’s most visible work has been to create the Oregon Benchmarks, a set of quantifiable indicators for the economy, communities and the environment. The benchmarks define Oregon’s strategic goals as measurable outcomes, with targets for improvement. The Benchmarks have been used to address many topics, at the state level and in communities, among public, private and nonprofit sectors, and in several types of planning. The Oregon Benchmarks have attracted much attention outside Oregon, including Minnesota where they developed Minnesota Milestones based on the Oregon Benchmarks. Come hear from Oregon and Minnesota on their approaches to developing benchmarks, and discuss ideas for using strategic benchmarks to manage change – local, state and national.

Three years ago Connecticut adopted a state policy that is committed to reducing child poverty by 50% in the next decade. Today, we are developing high-impact strategies to reach this goal. This workshop will present how such a bold and innovative state policy came into being, where it is going, and who’s taking it there.

In the period after 1960, an increasing proportion of the nation’s poor have been single parents, primarily single mothers. This is especially alarming for the future; the children of single mothers are at greater risk of a variety of ills, including both poverty and becoming poor single parents themselves. This workshop will explore a number of questions including: does marriage make a difference for poor kids? And why? What led to the increase in the number of poor single parent families? And what can we do about it?

The University of Missouri’s Rural Policy Research Institute (RUPRI) created a Community Information Resource Center (CIRC) that focuses on how data can be utilized for decision support at the community, regional and national levels. Participants will get hands on experience with publicly accessible Internet GIS tools that they can use when they return home. Workshop participants will be able to: (1) geographically visualize community, regional, and national-level data via the Internet; (2) integrate new spatial data and overlay these data to conduct location-specific analyses and generate maps, dynamic reports, and “what if” scenarios; and (3) understand how these tools can be utilized in an integrated fashion for decision support.

The United Nations has sponsored several international conferences, including the Copenhagen Conference on Poverty and the Conference on Women in Beijing. Using the results of these conferences, they created the Millennium Development Goals to reduce world poverty. The U.N. Development Program has some excellent frameworks for analyzing poverty and strategies for reducing poverty.

The workshop will feature the Skills Enhancement Project—a high impact community action project that moves low-wage workers into good paying jobs with access to employer paid benefits. The project started at CAP Services and has been replicated at 10 other CAA’s in Wisconsin. In addition, the Annie E. Casey Foundation will feature its Rural Family Economic Security Initiative.

This workshop will present a conceptual framework known as the “Credit Path®,” which identifies four stages people pass through on their way to asset accumulation and greater financial security. Originally developed in 1995 by Alternatives Federal Credit Union’s CEO William Myers, the Credit Path® has been used by some financial institutions as a tool to design new products and services that can help people advance toward greater financial security.

Place-based philanthropies, community foundations and other community asset building organizations can play a significant role in addressing poverty, vulnerability and social exclusion. We will hear from the leaders of two dynamic organizations that are playing a catalytic role in developing strong and enduring solutions to pressing economic and social needs, and innovative means to build assets for individuals, households and communities.

Let Justice Roll. The NCCUSA organized and led the national campaign to increase the minimum wage. Their state-level organizing efforts won in most every state where they worked. Find out how to help organize in your state! The Benefit Bank: a web-based one-stop opportunity for poor people to fill out all relevant applications from a single computer. Think of it as “TurboTax for Everything.” No forms, no going to government offices. Fill it out at your leisure and when you go to the office you will have a calculation of what you ought to be getting. This is an empowering position. As of 3.12.07 the Benefit Bank has delivered $5,973,236 to 4910 families. The Putnam Emergency Shelter Project has confirmed the power of ecumenical support and volunteerism to improve and enhance the services of the community. The Homelessness Task Force invited all of the local faith based organizations to come to the table to develop an emergency shelter for the winter. In spite of political controversy, the shelter opened its doors in mid-December and continued through the end of March. This project clearly demonstrated the positive effects and strength of coordination and collaboration among numerous human service providers and our faith-based community.

The Shriver Center uses a variety of techniques to promote the best and most efficient practices in using law and policy to end poverty. This workshop focuses on the importance of communications in changing the way we talk and take action to end poverty. We will focus on the Shriver Center ’s Clearinghouse Review: Journal of Poverty Law and Policy -- the nation’s intellectual marketplace for legal aid lawyers and others to share ideas and plant seeds for legal and antipoverty policy innovation. Additionally the workshop will focus on the Shriver Center ’s media relations tools including State of Poverty Congressional Scorecard -- how every member of Congress represents low-income Americans.

How the variations among states and the holes in the safety net create problems for poor people and taxpayers alike. How to reshape the EITC and tax code to reduce poverty.

Racial and class hierarchies in the US are linked both in their historical development and in the way we have woven the structural fabric of opportunity. Despite the relationship between the two, we often organize our work and issues in ways that treats race and class as separate. This workshop will examine both the nature of “structural racism” and it’s implications for strategies to build healthy, sustainable communities.

This workshop will describe the work of Wider Opportunities for Women. They developed the concepts and methods of determining “living wages" in an area, and have worked with over 100 communities on living wage campaigns. Learn about the living wage and their other initiatives related to family economic security and seniors.

In January of 2007, the Economic Policy Institute announced the Agenda for Shared Prosperity. The American people need an economic agenda that will spur growth, reduce insecurity, and provide broadly shared prosperity. Drawing upon some of the best informed and most innovative experts, the Agenda for Shared Prosperity will advance an economic program that is comprehensive, understandable, and workable.

In April, 2007, the Center for American Progress released the report of a year-long task force on poverty. The task force report calls for a national goal of cutting poverty in half in ten years, and makes a set of recommendations intended to accomplish that goal. This workshop will include a presentation and discussion of the Task Force’s approach, recommendations, and the opportunities to dramatically reduce poverty in America.

The Corporation for Enterprise Development has led the nation in creation of asset development strategies such as microbusiness programs, the IDA program, and their new SEED program. Come find out what YOU should be doing NOW. Steve Savner will describe a project that the Center for Community Change and immigrant worker centers have undertaken to market a pre-paid debit card to people, many of whom are unbanked. The card offers low cost financial services, including remittances, to cardholders. Project income will be generated for the worker centers to support their organizing and advocacy work. Zenae Scott will describe the innovative combination of capacity building and services offered through the California CASH program.

We are nearing a time when the world’s supply and production of petroleum and natural gas will go into an irreversible decline even as worldwide energy demand continues to rise. The implications for our economy and our entire way of life are enormous, with America’s poor families hit first and hardest by energy shortages and skyrocketing costs. This session will examine “Peak Oil and Gas” fact and fiction, shed some light on what all this means to Community Action and its mission, and explore what we must do to prepare for massive changes as we strive to build a just and sustainable society.

How green development can enhance community revitalization through energy efficiency, improve occupant health, increase life-span of building and be smartly sited to provide transportation, school, and job access.

This workshop will provide background information on the field of microenterprise development in the United States and will look at two rural Community Action Agencies and their microenterprise development programs. Participants will learn why these CAA’s have initiated microenterprise programs and how microenterprise can complement already existing programs. We will also discuss the need for additional programs in rural areas, and how your CAA might develop such a program with assistance from AEO and the Partnership.