United Way Goes to Congress
With the current urgency around fixing the federal budget, Congress is looking for ways to streamline the government and make it more effective. Today, United Way of the Bay Area briefed Congress about our innovative SparkPoint Centers to spotlight how providing multiple services under one roof streamlines the process of moving people out of poverty.
Our host, Representative Barbara Lee, co-chair for the Out of Poverty Caucus, wanted her peers in Congress to hear about the innovative strategy and impressive results of centers like SparkPoint across the United States who are moving people in poverty into the middle class. We were joined by our partners, The Annie E. Casey Foundation,Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), MDC and United Way Worldwide with the generous support of AT&T.
United Way of the Bay Area and our partners presented a model of “bundled” services, which integrate multiple programs in one place to address the complexity of a person’s financial situation. For example, we highlighted our 10 Bay Area SparkPoint Centers that bundle services to give low-income residents one stop to access public benefits, financial and job coaching, credit counseling, job training, and referrals for housing, child care and emergency food.
“The SparkPoint model is really the only way to empower people and provide pathways out of poverty to reignite the American Dream,” said Representative Lee. “I’m really proud to be doing this in the Bay Area in my Congressional District.”
United Way of the Bay Area and our partners left the Congressional briefing energized that we had made an impact on policy-makers. Our hope is that our results with SparkPoint can be an inspiration to government which is in desperate need of creative solutions to poverty.
“With the government threatening to cut services for the poor, we can’t do business as usual,” said Anne Wilson, Chief Executive Officer of United Way of the Bay Area. “We need to find innovative ways of streamlining services. We hope our visit to Congress will spur government support for our model as well as shift how government services are administered.”
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