Roadmap to Cut PovertyInspires Regional Collective Action

About the Program

Category: Community and Economic Development (Best in Category)

Year: 2013

Gripped by the Great Recession, many counties across the US reacted with 20th-century tactics, such as across-the-board cuts and retreat from collaborative partnerships into silos. Others, including California’s Solano and Contra Costa Counties, in partnership with United Way of the Bay Area, chose to pursue a more proactive, 21st-century public policy framework: address the root cause [poverty] of so much of the cost of government [crisis services] and grow economic prosperity [education and jobs] together [collective action]. Inspired with a vision – cutting poverty in half in the San Francisco Bay Area – and committed to a mission – quantify poverty, establish metrics and support effective services – these partners charted their course with a “Roadmap,” calling government, business, educators, service providers and ordinary residents to collective action to reduce poverty and grow prosperity in the region. Early returns include exceptional levels of civic engagement, reductions in safety net service gaps/overlaps and increased numbers of low-income residents accessing critical income supports. In addition, this unprecedented success in deconstructing the behemoth of “poverty” has aligned its root causes and components with practical, measurable activities that increase family and community prosperity, and provided key officials for the first time with metrics to support effective public policy.