Community Engagement

      
Top: Circles of Support Feelin' Groovy summer picnic with a 70s theme. Bottom, left to right: Pucks Against Poverty engages the community through puck painting, community presentations, and service projects; many children are engaged in Community Action Duluth activities.

Strategy: Community Engagement (strengthening community partnerships that lead to reducing barriers for people with low incomes)

Definition: Building relationships by getting individuals to work together and communicate toward a shared goal, vision, and plan of action.

Examples of progress:

• We send out monthly e-newsletters to program participants and others interested in our work.
• We created a Facebook page which we update weekly.
• We host quarterly “Solutions to Poverty” forums, where graduates from the Circles of Support - Getting Ahead classes present ideas about reducing barriers to getting out of poverty to an audience of community leaders and interested people.
• We created Bridge of Self-Sufficiency (BOSS), a committee of people from diverse income backgrounds, to raise money to assist Circles of Support Participants as they gain employment and transition off public assistance.
• We launched Pucks Against Poverty, a Circles Community Engagement strategy to highlight concerns of the working poor in Duluth.
• We presented information on green jobs and hosted a tour during the Duluth Sustainability Week events in June 2010.