Child sitting on the counter helping his mom make a salad.

Addressing Poverty

For families to be healthy and thrive, they must be able to meet their basic needs

What We Work For

We believe all families need access to stable and sufficient income and fresh, nutritious, and culturally- appropriate foods.

People with barriers to education and employment and people in low-paid jobs with inconsistent work schedules and few benefits often struggle to make ends meet.

How We Do It

We advance inclusive policy ideas at the state and federal level to expand opportunities for children and families.

We believe that policies must directly address the structural factors that systematically disadvantage people of color, to ensure families in the United States can meet their basic needs.

We join with national, state, and local partners to urge policy strategies that strengthen work supports, public assistance, education and training programs, and nutritional assistance.

Ultimately, our work is focused on ensuring that all families can thrive.

We develop policy strategies and work with partners to create pathways for all families to achieve economic security.

To do this, we:

Conduct research and highlight data so that our policy recommendations are always evidence-informed and research-based.

Work with partners and stakeholders to ensure that our messages and recommendations are driven by the people we hope to serve.

Create materials and resources that focus on families from different racial/ethnic groups, people who identify as LGBTQ, and people with different documentation statuses, to ensure that we are serving the needs of all stakeholders.

Always use an intersectional lens, acknowledging that families of color and families of low socioeconomic status tend to be the most affected.

Define family in an inclusive way—including single-parent households, families with two parents of the same sex or gender, domestic partners, chosen family, and extended family, among many others—acknowledging that families are organized in different ways.

Take steps to debunk myths and change harmful narratives that further denigrate and damage our communities.

Our work will be successful when all families have a stable and sufficient income, and consistent access to fresh, nutritious, and culturally-appropriate foods.

Our work will reduce the share of families living in poverty and deep poverty—promoting economic opportunity and ensuring that families have the ability to be healthy and successful.