News & Events
Community Action Launches Circles Initiative
CAPMC is one of the six Pennsylvania Community Action Agencies implementing and testing a new strategy to end poverty.
The Circles Initiative will endeavor to end poverty by building community solutions to barriers people face in getting out of poverty through increased awareness, engagement and by supporting and befriending families who are trying to get out of poverty.
A Circle is a supportive, intentional, reciprocal, befriending relationship made up of one Circle Leader who is living in poverty and two to five Circles Allies who usually are from middle class. A Circle typically meets a minimum of once or twice a month, or as needed, to build friendships and to work on the Circle Leader's dreams, plans, and goals.
The Move the Mountain’s (MTM) national Circles™ Campaign, involves more than 40 communities in 16 states. A group of energetic and highly committed community leaders are in the process of helping 1,000 low-income families to get out of poverty permanently. They helped over fifty families leave welfare in the first few years of their work in Ames, Iowa. For every $1 spent on their program, they returned $2 in welfare and food stamp subsidies to the state, and $4 to the community as new earned income.
The Community Action Association of Pennsylvania has sponsored Move the Mountain programs for the past two years, resulting in the Circles PA Campaign. Six community action agencies have established Circles Initiatives in western, south central, and eastern Pennsylvania. The Circles Initiative is a high impact strategy to end poverty developed by Beyond Welfare in conjunction with the Move the Mountain Leadership Center of Ames, Iowa.
This initiative will have significant impacts on poverty reduction, community empowerment and economic self-sufficiency for Pennsylvania and specifically, Mercer County’s poor.
This approach crosses the lines between the middle and lower classes through understanding and involvement, by cultivating supportive friendships between lower income families (or individuals) and people in the middle and upper classes. The strategy is two-fold, helping end poverty one family at a time and creating long-term, systematic change in the way poverty is viewed and dealt with.
The Circles Initiative shows people how to solve their own problems so they can really progress. It not only introduces lower income families to the economic and networking advantages available to the middle and upper classes, but also exposes volunteers from the upper classes to poverty at a very real and personal level.