June 8, 2009

There are over 670,000 people in Illinois living in extreme poverty, which for a family of four is less than $30 a day to pay for food, shelter, medical care, clothing, and all the necessities of life. Families living in extreme poverty lack basic human rights, as demonstrated by the risk of homelessness, illness, and violence in their lives. Heartland Alliance's From Poverty to Opportunity Campaign: Realizing Human Rights in Illinois now brings together a broad range of residents of the most poverty-affected communities throughout the state, advocates, organizers, faith-based institutions, and policy leaders to develop and advocate for policy solutions.

Since 2006, the campaign has brought together over 250 organizations and nearly 2000 people from every legislative district in Illinois. Together, people and organizations advocate for solutions to reduce by half the number of people living in extreme poverty in Illinois by 2015.

The Campaign has successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of addressing domestic poverty with a human right framework and has become a nationally recognized model for addressing poverty. Resources, primers, fact sheets, and audio and video files from the Campaign are available to you online at http://www.heartlandalliance.org/poverty.

But the work has only begun. With the Commission on the Elimination of Poverty having its first meeting this month, it is time to roll up our sleeves to create the substantive plans to make our goal a reality. We face challenges not anticipated when the Campaign was launched, but these challenges just heighten the importance of our work. Our success is dependent on growing the breadth and depth of engagement of people and organization throughout the state to call for realizing human rights in Illinois. Until your voice is part of the struggle, we will not achieve our goal. Join today!

• Endorse the Campaign
• Learn more about the Campaign and Extreme Poverty
• Questions? Contact Doug Schenkelberg

Subscribe to RSS