United Way Awards Community Initiative Grant to Contact for "Getting Ahead/Circles" Work

The Getting Ahead/Circles Initiative has received the go-ahead from United Way of Central New York. Contact has been awarded a $74,000 Community Initiative Fund grant to begin work on this next phase of the Bridges Out of Poverty effort launched in 2005. With this grant, individuals in poverty will learn skills for transitioning out of poverty and develop a circle of allies to help them implement their plans.

We will partner with five community organizations (Salvation Army, YMCA, Women’s Opportunity Center, Syracuse Housing Authority, and Huntington Family Centers) to build their capacity to help groups of clients use the workbook, Getting Ahead in a Just Getting’-by World. The workbook is a companion book to Bridges Out of Poverty. Getting Ahead (GA) groups will work with a trained facilitator to explore the impact that poverty has had on them, investigate economic realities, complete a self-assessment of their own resources, make plans to build their own resources, and develop a mental model of community prosperity.

Upon completing Getting Ahead training, participants move to their transition plan with the support of a "circle" of community allies. Contact will seek allies through businesses and other organizations. The Circles component, developed by Move the Mountain [movethemountain.org] also creates a guiding coalition to address community level barriers to economic stability and poverty reduction.

United Way’s Community Initiative Fund supports innovative approaches to address important human care issues in Onondaga County. Selected initiatives typically address gaps in services or underserved populations. In preparation for this ambitious request of the UW, Contact trainers Angela Douglas and Marisol Hernandez co-facilitated the first Getting Ahead Workbook project in our community this past spring and summer with eight individuals graduating from the program and ready for Circle allies to help support them in achieving their plans.