Grassroots and Groundwork

This year’s lineup of sessions is powerful. Each 70-minute presentation highlights a unique proven or emerging model or advocacy initiative. Come prepared to discover ways you can replicate these efforts in your own poverty-reduction work.  Plan on taking home numerous practical takeaways and tools.

You’ll have a chance to attend four of the 20 sessions offered. Plus as a conference attendee, you’ll be able to access all 20 sessions via webinars – free of charge – after the conference.

Empowering Domestic Violence Survivors to Create Assets and Wealth

Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law
Chicago, IL

The Shriver Center identifies, develops and supports creative and collaborative approaches toward social and economic justice for low-income people. One unique local initiative brings together a community bank and a domestic violence organization to provide financial education, individual development accounts and small dollar loans to domestic violence survivors. These financial tools put survivors on a path to self-sufficiency.

 

Combating Predatory Lending With Innovative Workplace Solutions

Rubicon National Social Innovations
San Francisco, CA

In the U.S., 40 million households and 106 million individuals are underbanked and must turn to expensive non-bank financial service providers as their primary means of accessing credit. Rubicon developed Emerge, an employer-sponsored lending and financial education program, to help workers emerge from financial debt traps and build positive credit. Emerge uses credit built through loan payroll deductions to give working low-income people access to the full array of financial services that mainstream lenders offer. It is a win-win program: financial institutions gain a profitable and risk-mitigated approach to making small dollar loans; employees gain financial education, affordable financial services and credit building.

 

Making Public Investments Create Jobs for Low-Income Workers

Alliance for Metropolitan Stability
Minneapolis, MN

HIRE Minnesota is a coalition of 70+ organizations. Its legislative advocacy efforts cross racial, cultural, geographic and issue boundaries to champion the interests of low-income people. The coalition ensures that decision-makers explicitly use public investments in renewable energy and infrastructure industries to lift people out of poverty. It also serves as a watchdog to make sure that state agencies meet their goals for hiring and training people of color.

 

Youth Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship Education

Four Bands Community Fund
Eagle Butte, SD

Most children are taught to read and write at an early age. Why not also teach them the basics of finance when they are young? Making Waves is a youth-focused financial literacy and entrepreneurship program. It works in partnership with schools, community organizations, businesses, government agencies and the media to help youth manage their money better and create their own jobs so they can grow up to become self-sufficient adults.

 

Coaching Techniques to Build Self-Sufficiency in Underserved Markets

Burst for Prosperity
Renton, WA

Puget Sound Welcome Back Center
Des Moines, WA

The overall goal of any type of coaching is to teach a skill and encourage people to believe in themselves. In this case, career coaching helps front-line social service providers empower clients to see the assets in themselves – assets they can combine with community resources to help them reach their dreams of an education, family-wage employment, increased life assets or long-term financial stability. The Puget Sound Welcome Back Center incorporated career coaching into their case management model to help highly skilled immigrants navigate the U.S. licensing process to re-enter their respective professions, regain professional identity and achieve financial independence.

 

Facilitating Successful Re-entry with Entrepreneurship

Mercy Corps Northwest
Portland, OR

Women who have been released from Coffee Creek Correctional Facility often struggle to find employment. They are impoverished and unable to afford housing, transportation or health care. An integrated program is vital to their successful reintegration. Mercy Corps combines a microenterprise/life-skills curriculum with a one-stop transition center and a coalition of 40 re-entry support services to teach ex-offenders financial literacy, business plan development, effective interpersonal communications skills and practical planning.

 

Buy Local" Campaigns to Create Sustainable Communities

Umpqua Community Development Corporation
Roseburg, OR

American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA)
Bozeman, MT

Local entrepreneurs, cooperatives and community-serving businesses are most successful when they work together – especially when it comes to creating campaigns that encourage community members to buy local and advocate for public policies that facilitate and nurture homegrown businesses. Independent Business Alliances (IBAs) support these collaborative efforts. Think Local Umpqua is a successful IBA that combines rural entrepreneurship with a buy-local campaign to promote economic vitality in Roseburg, Oregon.

 

Feminism and Poverty: New Directions in Advocacy and Public Policy

Child and Family Policy Center
Des Moines, IA

Are gender and poverty relevant today? The Child and Family Policy Center recently reexamined the “feminization of poverty” that spurred significant past policy reforms. Their new report reveals distressing trends and factors that place women more at risk of being in poverty: the rise in single parenting, the decline in earnings for less-educated workers, and the reduction in safety net supports through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). These facts emphasize the need to explore policy implications and opportunities to mobilize a new movement against poverty on the basis of gender equity.

 

Business Incubators and Asset Development in Distressed Communities

Lummi Nation Ventures Community Partnership
Bellingham, WA

The Ventures Gateway Center, slated to open in 2011, is a rural incubator with an innovative approach: it focuses on three strategies – families, education and economic development – and involves the entire community, including the most economically challenged members. The key is to identify and grow existing community assets and provide one-stop access to a range of services: financial literacy, small business development and microloans, retail outlets, e-commerce work stations, artist studios and a daycare. This promising model offers a fresh take on how incubators can build sustainable communities.

 

Providing Affordable and Healthy Food in Rural Communities

Center for Rural Affairs
Lyons, NE

We all need to eat. In rural communities, low incomes, out-migration, unreliable transportation and lack of full-service grocery stores all contribute to declining food access. With this decline comes poor health and unstable incomes. The Oregon Food Bank, Kansas State University and the nonprofit Center for Rural Affairs teamed up to address the challenges rural grocers and consumers face. They offer models for successful rural grocery store ownership and they propose ways to engage community members in policy advocacy around food access. 

 

Using Social Media to Support Entrepreneurship in Rural Communities

Rural Learning Center
Howard, SD

Social networks open the door for rural communities to connect with people locally and beyond, helping to build relationships while encouraging and nurturing entrepreneurship. Facebook, Twitter, Ning and web blogs are online technology tools that can break down physical and geographic barriers to advance community engagement efforts and defeat rural isolation.

 

Public Markets: Catalyst for Immigrant and Minority Entrepreneurship

Latino Economic Development Center
Minneapolis, MN

 Neighborhood Development Center
St. Paul, MN

Multidimensional, multicultural programs that link entrepreneurship with neighborhood revitalization successfully tackle entrenched poverty and disenfranchisement in low-income communities of color. One highly acclaimed example is Mercado Central, a flourishing Latino revitalization effort is in Minneapolis. Mercado Central integrates community organizing with microbusiness and real estate development to generate sales in excess of $5 million per year for 45 tenants. This model shows how low-income entrepreneurs – in any community – can achieve their dreams and transform economically depressed neighborhoods if offered the appropriate tools.   

 

Effective Advocacy Campaigns Through Cross-Cultural Collaboration

Native American Youth and Family Center
Portland, OR

Three culturally distinct nonprofit community development organizations organized the Housing Organizations of Color Coalition. Their goal is clear: to bring about an action plan that focuses on the housing needs, aspirations and challenges faced by African-Americans, Latinos and Native Americans. Historically, these groups approached their issues in isolation and often in competition with one another. Now, as a coalition, they provide a strong, united voice with policymakers. This proven approach has implications for community building and fostering race relations across the U.S.

 

Grassroots Advocacy to Improve Home Health Care Jobs

Paraprofessional Health Institute (PHI)
Bronx, NY

Iowa CareGivers Association
West Des Moines, IA

Direct-care (home health care) is one of the fastest-growing occupations in the country. Unfortunately, workers typically earn low wages and lack health coverage. The combined efforts of PHI and the Iowa Caregivers Association (ICA) weave interventions in policy and practice together to reduce poverty for direct-care workers. Their advocacy, research, public education and technical assistance efforts can lead to workforce stability, reduced poverty, a stronger economy and improved care. 

 

Innovations in Integrating Credit With Financial Support Services

Express Advantage
Seattle, WA

This unique partnership between a credit union and a nonprofit community-based organization integrates access to capital with financial support services. Rather than making people come to them, credit union staff bring “the bank” out to where their members currently receive other services. At the same time, the community-based organization reaches out to their clients with credit union information, and they incorporate financial education and counseling into their case management services. The low-income, formerly unbanked people gain knowledge and skills to maximize family resources and build savings.

 

Innovations in Job Training and Workforce Development Programs

NYC Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO)
New York, NY

Three job training and workforce development programs by CEO are breaking new ground in fighting poverty. They include (1) Community Partners Initiative, which connects low-income job-ready clients of community organizations with job openings at city career centers; (2) NYC Justice Corps, a re-entry program of work readiness, community service, internships, job placement and post-placement support for formerly incarcerated 18- to 24- year-olds; and (3) Jobs-Plus, an employment services program offering employment-related services at public housing developments.

 

Your Public Policy Toolkit to Reduce Poverty

Strategies to Eliminate Poverty (STEP)
Seattle, WA

Knowledge is power. STEP’s toolkit offers community-based organizations information, policy objectives, and concrete tools and strategies to improve their state’s well-being. The kit describes the current policy structures around health, education, child care, workforce development, food, housing and assets – and how each state compares with the rest of the nation. It includes four key strategies that organizations and coalitions can use to improve economic security in their state. Since informed strategies are successful ones, the toolkit is a crucial step toward effective action in poverty reduction.

 

Making Green Jobs Work for Low-Income Families

Isles’ Center for Energy and Environmental Training (CEET)
Trenton, NJ

Will low-income people find work in the “green economy”? The field of energy- and environmental-related jobs is flourishing, due in part to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) economic stimulus funds. Isles’ has developed a nationally recognized program that ensures that un- or under-employed residents have a shot at landing these living-wage jobs. CEET provides them with green job training and a career path through collaboration with employers, labor, government, education and community-based organizations. The training currently focuses on residential energy audits, energy retrofits and environmental cleanup.  

 

Successful Entrepreneurship Development in Native Communities and Beyond

Oweesta Corporation
Rapid City, SD

The Native Enterprise & Entrepreneurship Development (NEED) initiative is based on a new model of community economic development. It is tailored for Native community development financial institutions (CDFIs) and their partners.  NEED provides comprehensive training and technical assistance to help communities develop effective enterprise and entrepreneurship systems. The program is unique in that it embraces and works with culturally based nuances encountered when developing business environments in Native communities.

 

"Cultural Entrepreneurship": How Cultural Assets Create Business and Jobs

Global Center for Cultural Entrepreneurship
Santa Fe, NM

Despite its high rate of poverty, New Mexico has an abundance of cultural wealth and cultural enterprises. Experts are convinced that entrepreneurial ventures, especially for low-income individuals and persons of color, have a greater chance to succeed if they tap into the state’s abundance of cultural resources. The Global Center for Cultural Entrepreneurship has developed a promising model that creates a local network of policy leaders, mentors, cooperative art spaces and economic development practitioners to foster businesses that are built on existing resources, assets and abilities in rural communities.