Pushing MAP to the Top of the Hill

It is hard to believe it, but half a year has gone by since the release of our MAP report at The New School in New York. Since that March night, we have met with people from all walks of life as we have crossed the country sharing the research results. The report has been downloaded more than six hundred times - and hundreds more copies have been passed hand to hand at live events and conferences.  

The response has been tremendous and positive and it has exceeded our wildest dreams - it is continuing to build. The next step in the MAP project will be bringing the methodology behind this research and the insights gained from partnering with people living in poverty, academics, and social workers, to change the policies which have such a huge impact on the lives of people living in poverty. 

Maryann Broxton, co-director of the US MAP research, meeting with members of Senator Elizabeth Warren's Boston office.

To that end, in partnership with our friends at the St. Mary’s Center in Oakland, we have been working over the past few months to prepare a resolution which city, state, or national legislatures can use to recognize the importance of multidimensional poverty and the value of the insights gained through the MAP project as a tool to inform the development of policy going forward. The resolution (which can be read here), is the first step towards changing our understanding of poverty in this country, and to making sure that in the future when policymakers work to address poverty they are doing so with the insight and voices of people living in poverty.

The St. Mary’s Center launched this process, passing the resolution to their partners at the city and state level legislatures in California, and sharing the full text with the office of Barbara Lee, their congressional representative and chair of the Congressional Out of Poverty Caucus. In September, Maryann Broxton, co-director of the MAP research in the US, shared the resolution with Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office in Massachusetts. In October, as ATD Fourth World participates in a national conference on TANF organized by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, we will be meeting with senators and representatives from areas where ATD Fourth World has teams or conducted the MAP research. We will share the research with them, ask them to support the resolution, and ask if they will welcome a delegation of people in their communities who are living in poverty and who want to share their concerns.

The goal of all of this is clear - to make sure that the voices of people impacted by anti-poverty programs are at the center of the debate around those programs. As Joseph Wresinski said - if people in poverty are not present when the laws are written, then they won’t be there when the laws are implemented. 

This will be an ongoing process of advocacy and engagement with policymakers at all levels, and to make it work we are going to need your help. We’ll have details about how you can share the resolution in your own communities coming up soon. In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about how you can get involved, please reach out by email at: DMeyer[at]4thworldmovement.org.