EY2010: working-age poverty

Church Action on Poverty is working in partnership with Community Links to deliver this programme

Get involved: apply to run a local listening campaign

Applications are now open for organisations to run local listening campaigns in their communities, uncovering the issues and myths around work and poverty in their area.

• For all the details and to apply, please download the application form.

• We have also released an action pack for organisations running local listening campaigns - you can download it in PDF or Word format.
• You can see a list of the listening campaigns happening so far here.
• You can read feedback from listening campaigns that have already happened here.
  
• When you've run a listening campaign, submit your findings online, or by returning the feedback form from the action pack.
• For more information, please contact Maeve McGoldrick at Community Links on 020 74739644 or by email.

What is working-age poverty?

Around 20% of adults in the UK live in poverty. This isn’t just people on benefits - over half are in families where at least one person works.

Many are poor because they can’t work, and benefits are not enough to lift them out of poverty. Others can work but can’t find a job. And many are in jobs that don’t pay enough to raise them out of poverty. For example, in 2009, 22% of women were paid less than £7 per hour.

Join the debate

Tackling poverty and unemployment were dominant themes of the general election, and will continue to be as our government tries to tackle the deficit.

We asked a group of experts to write for our blog on which policy change would make the most difference in reducing poverty. And by experts we don’t just mean academics and policy staff, although we do hear from some of them. We also mean people experiencing these issues for themselves. We fervently believe that someone experiencing a problem often understands it best. 

• Join the debate online
• Download a booklet summarising the issues.

What will the project do?

By working closely with grassroots groups around the country and people experiencing poverty, we will do four things:

• Uncover some of the policy issues that keep people poor, and take them to policy-makers.
  
• Identify some of the myths about working-age people in poverty, and develop a programme of work to tackle them.
  
• Recognise and share examples of good practice in tackling poverty, particularly amongst small local organisations.
• Build the capacity of small organisations to campaign on issues in their local area.

To achieve this, the programme will include:

• A series of grassroots meetings around the country in the spring and summer, to identify the issues.
  
• The formation of a ‘myth-busting’ group to tackle the myths we’ve identified.
  
• A series of roundtables with policy-makers in the autumn, to raise the policy issues we have uncovered.
• A ‘best practice’ award to recognise projects that tackle working-age poverty, held in the autumn.
• A programme of training events throughout the year.

Further information

• If you are a journalist interested in the working-age poverty programme, please contact Will Horwitz at Community Links on 0207 473 9669 or by email.
• For general information about the working-age poverty programme, please email uk@community-links.org.