Benefits Access

Next Friday from 1-3 pm at the Kent County Human Services Complex there will be a presentation and discussion of Benefit Access Initiatives. While the presentation will speak to the State DHS and United Way partnership for this work, it is important for participants to share thier local stories of Benefit Access, Bridge Card uses, Farmer Markets and Buy Local programs. What do local efforts to connect people with the benefits they are eligible for look like in West Michigan? What will happen if the SNAP program is changed as some in the House of Representatives have proposed? What impact would that have on those famlies and children in need in our communities in Region III. How do we make sure there is broad based understanding of the implications of these choices that might be made? This is YOUR chance to contribute...lets have a conversation...here and next Friday (in person).

One Community Campaign

One Community refers to the American ideal that we are one people, and that our prosperity and quality of life depend on all residents contributing fully to the economic, social and cultural life of our communities and our state. Unfortunately, the rising poverty rate and associated negative trends in many quality of life indicators show that we have been moving further away from this ideal in recent years. One Community is intended to function simultaneously as a poverty indicators monitoring system, an evaluation system to inform local and state anti-poverty policies and practices, and as a communications campaign intended to ensure that the voices of poor people and the need to eliminate poverty remain in the forefront of public consciousness.


The first component of the One Community model is an information system that includes monitoring trends in poverty and poverty-related quality of life indicators

Voices for Action Region 6 Meeting

(eg., food security, access to adequate health care, education, housing), as well as supply and demand for social, educational, medical and employment services. A second component involves evaluation research by social scientists from Western Michigan University who will assess how adequately community resources and services are working (individually and collectively) to reduce poverty. The third component of One Community is a communications (public information) campaign that juxtaposes information about poverty in our respective communities and statewide with the highest ideals that we Americans embrace and espouse.

We expect that One Community will lead to the creation of a network of citizens energized to work collaboratively to eliminate poverty. In each community and throughout the region, the network will include: service providers from both the non-profit and public sectors; faith-based and other community organizations; university-based researchers; and the people, themselves, including those who are poor.

The economic, social and cultural vitality of our communities depend on all people having the basic resources needed to contribute and participate fully in community life. Our communities and our region cannot prosper when so many of our citizens are encumbered by poverty. By highlighting how far we are from providing so many of our children and families with the most basic building blocks for a prosperous future, One Community seeks to enable residents from all backgrounds to envision a brighter future for our communities and our region, and what it will take to get there.