At our Annual Meeting, we made the BOLD GOAL to lift 1,000 families out of poverty in 2,000 days.

This goal will take dedication and long-term commitment from everyone in our community.  Helping our neighbors reach their full potential will be worth it.

Poverty levels in a community affect nearly every aspect of life. Poverty influences the quality of our local education, the availability of jobs for qualified workers, the crime rate, and the stability of our local economy.

When families are lifted out of poverty, they gain better access to education and healthcare, enhanced job skills, and are better members of a functioning society. Their children will then have better access to childhood interventions that will help break the generational cycle of poverty.

Our goal includes lifting families to be higher than 200% of the Federal Poverty Level, which is the rate identified as becoming self-sufficient and no longer in need of social or government interventions to make ends meet.

United Way leads the local social services sector, and we have access to worldwide best practices that allow us to identify the root causes of poverty and to collaborate with certified agencies, government entities, and other non-profits in our community to find solutions to the multi-prong problem of poverty.

Our Avenues to Opportunity program holistically lifts people to their full potential by addressing their individual barriers by providing basic needs, offering job and budget coaching, and providing our vulnerable neighbors with the tools they need to reach self-sufficiency.

Here is what that looks like: 

1. A family living in poverty reaches out to a local non-profit agency, school, or government agency for assistance with basic needs.

2. The agency that first receives the request helps address the basic needs, and often begins working with United Way and our network to take care of needs the agency cannot take care of on their own.

3. Once basic needs are addressed, United Way works to provide other opportunities to work toward long-term solutions. Examples include access to childcare and health insurance, job coaching, and budget coaching.

4. With these new skills, individuals get higher-paying jobs and have financial strategies they can employ to ensure they comfortably meet their household bills.

5. Their children then have access to quality resources in and out of the classroom and see their parents modeling behavior that helps break generational poverty.

We ask that you commit to helping us with our BOLD GOAL to lift 1,000 families out of poverty in 2,000 days.