Even with Cleveland having one of the highest poverty rates in the country there is clearly inadequate efforts towards both reducing and eventually ending poverty.   Further there is little taking place to relieve the burden of poverty by providing adequate housing, health care,  equitable education,  living wage jobs  and other programs/services to persons in need in the Cleveland area. To make real change we must have an organizing campaign that is lead by the low-income persons who are being directly impacted.

In Cleveland we have many groups who are working hard to address the issues of poverty.  However, they tend to be segmented and disconnected. Individually most do not have the membership and/or the resources to make desired impact on the issues that need to be addressed.

We will hold a collaborative organizing conference on February 18, 2012.  This conference will be focused on bringing low-income persons, related organizations and their allies together to collaborate on organizing strategy focused on rights and needs.  It is projected to be a conference at no cost to participants with an expected conference attendance of a minimum of 250.  The centerpiece of the conference will be an anticipated ten breakout groups in the following areas:  housing, health care, environmental and public health, hunger, children’s issues, education, living wage jobs, TANF/supportive Services, and basic human rights Issues Each breakout session will be lead by community leaders of local groups who are already organizing around those issue areas. In each session issue priorities will be identified by participants.  These identified issue priorities will be both short term (issues that can be won in six months or less) or longer term issues.  Following the identification of the issues, initial organizing strategies will be developed within the breakout sessions on the key immediate priority issues.

The results of the breakout groups will be presented to the full gathering for acceptance.  There will then be a second round of breakout groups mixing up people from the first breakout groups.  In that second session we will discuss how we can collaborate for change working together.  All participants at the conference will be asked to commit to participating in one or more of the issue area organizing campaigns.

Following the conference there will continue to be coordination of the organizing campaigns.  There will be a focus on joint recruitment to increase the capacity of the organizing groups and campaigns, as well as providing inter-organizational campaign and groups support for key organizing actions.

Anticipated Outcomes

1.       Provide a coordinated strong grassroots, low-income voice in Cleveland on the issues impacting poor people

2.       Coordinated identification of key issues and objectives

3.       Collaborative development of strategies

4.       Strengthen the individual partner groups by involving new active participants in issue priorities that impact their constituencies and they will be leading

5.       Have a greater opportunity  to achieve victories on issues lead by low-income persons

Partner Groups

Current partner groups in this collaborative effort include: Organize! Ohio, United Clevelanders Against Poverty, Cleveland Tenants Organization, Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, the Homeless Congress, Stop Targeting Ohio’s Poor, Family Connection Center, Community Partners for Affordable Accessible Health Care,  NOAH, We are the Uninsured,  Kinship Care Group, UHCAN-Ohio, Piece of Mind,  Senior Voices, Northern Ohioans for Budget Legislation Equality, Empowerment Center of Greater Cleveland, Environmental Health Watch, Hunger Network Of  Greater Cleveland,  Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry, Ohio Communities United, LEAP,  ESOP, Peoples Empowerment Coalition, Cleveland Jobs with Justice, Cleveland Neighborhood Leadership Institute, and Cleveland Alliance of HUD Tenants.