What makes this a true national plan?
Imagine being faced with the challenges of poverty, constantly fearing eviction, not having enough food for the day, or fearing for your and your family's safety every day and night.
The National Plan to End Poverty was created with this in mind. You can find the initial draft here. We hope you will provide feedback to help us enhance it before our national launch this fall.
What makes it a national plan?
1. National and local data: We have analyzed data from every county in every state and presented it in a manner that can inform practical actions by every citizen.
2. The Action Guide: We examined more than 1,000 programs - from every state in the nation. Relying on decades of experience in on-the-ground poverty work, we culled the best 300 actions for the initial draft. There is something for every American to do, no matter where you live.
3. Interaction: We present a forum for people who live or have lived in poverty to tell their stories and for organizations implementing successful programs to share their results. Constant interaction and feedback from people across the country will be a defining element of the plan.
National and local data
The Shared Humanity Project introduces the National Poverty Plan Standards (NPPS) with this plan. These standards are presented for every single county in the United States. You will find it here if you want to learn what a person or family needs to get by without assistance anywhere in the country. In addition, we present an interactive map of the country that shows these standards and how many people live below them.
A presentation of important indicators accompanies the map for every area in the U.S. These indicators provide critical data on which to base your actions and include: Housing; Education; Employment; Transportation; Access to technology; Presence of children; Health insurance, SNAP, & disability; and Ethnicity, citizenship, and race.
The Action Guide
The point of the data is to inform your actions, no matter where you live or your experience in life. You can use the data to determine what you can do and where it is most helpful to do it. Every county in the United States has poverty, so you do not have to look far to find where your actions will be helpful. The Action Guide provides clear, concrete actions that individuals, businesses, and organizations from all sectors can take to end poverty and work toward economic security.
When you visit the Action Guide, you can choose from 10 sectors and nine areas of action. For each of those combinations, there are at least three suggested actions. Because most of us belong to more than one sector and have more than one area that interests us, there are dozens and hundreds of possible ways for each person to engage. In addition, the actions are not tied to locations; many can be implemented in your town or county.
In addition to the suggested actions, we present 350 best practices from which you can learn. We plan to add many more actions and best practices as we continue to research and hear from folks around the country. Today, every single state is represented by one of our featured best practices.
Interaction
This is truly a people's plan, with a goal of getting feedback and suggestions from around the country. Building a community of people taking action is at the heart of this plan. And we hope it becomes a very large community.
We want to include your ideas or programs, no matter where you live and what sector or sectors you most closely identify with. This will always be the case; the plan will be iterative, and it is especially important now in the beta-test version of the plan. If you have implemented a program that works well in any of the areas highlighted in the plan, let us know so we can research it and then tell the country what you are doing.
If you have risen out of poverty or currently live in it and want to share your story, we will highlight it as we have begun to do in this section.
To end poverty in our nation, we need a national plan; with your help, this can be it.