Purpose

The Community Action Partnership has issued the Rooting Out Poverty Report to serve as the bedrock of a national campaign with suggested strategies for local action to promote a more just, more economically stable, more future focused national policy that helps people and communities reach their full potential.

Description

The Community Action Partnership has published Rooting out Poverty: A Campaign by America’s Community Action Network to serve as a strategic document of a national campaign for action that seeks to reach, educate, and inform every American about the fact that the current extent of poverty in America is unacceptable – and correctable.  It is a call to action and an appeal for commitment to establishing opportunities and pathways to make it possible for those now living in economic insufficiency to move up to self-sufficiency. 

Original copies of the report are available for purchase at a cost of $5.00 each.  The Partnership encourages CAA’s to order multiple copies for distribution to board members, community leaders, public officials, and at state or local meetings.  For additional information please contact Don Mathis by email at or on his direct line at 202.449.9774.  Don looks forward to hearing from you about your plans to use Rooting Out Poverty. 

Rooting Out Poverty is the result of the discussion that occurred during the National Conversation on Poverty and Economic Security, including the National Symposium on Poverty and Economic Security that was held in May 2007 and attended by more than 300 people across the nation.  View the PowerPoint presentation given to the Community Action Association of Pennsylvania by Jim Masters describing the National Conversation on Poverty; also on video – Windows Media or Quicktime format, which starts at 15:30 after the opening remarks by Don Mathis on Creating High Impact Nonprofits. 

An Executive Summary of Rooting Out Poverty provides an overview of the publication, including a description of the five action themes, strategies that community leaders and individuals can use to “root out” poverty at the state, local, and national levels. 

The report includes:

• About the Campaign – What This Campaign Is and How It Originated and How This Report Can Get the Job Done
• Five Action Themes help focus the work of rooting out poverty on national, state, and local levels.  They embrace work by faith groups, local governments, civic organizations, social service agencies, business groups and neighborhood organizations, as well as individuals, rich and poor, and in between.  The themes are designed to be flexible and adaptable, grounded in the needs of each community.  They are framed in positive terms – the desired outcomes that we all share – with strategies toward those outcomes.
  • Maximize Participation
  • Build an Economy that Works for Everyone
  • Invest for the Future
  • Maximize Equality of Opportunity
  • Ensure Healthy People and Places
• How You Can Take Action
• Many Linked and Influential Issues
• The Meaning of Poverty
• Preventing Poverty Becomes a National Effort
• Community Action Agencies: The Resource
• Duluth’s Blueprint to End Poverty
• What People Are Saying About Rooting Out Poverty

Outcomes

Rooting Out Poverty is intended to help generate action and enlist more support at the community, state, and national levels to help reduce and eliminate poverty.