Poverty Scholars Program

In 2008-2009, the Poverty Scholars Program, coordinated by Willie Baptist, will convene three Strategic Dialogue gatherings at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.  These gatherings will culminate in a summer Leadership School for poor and religious leaders in Charleston, West Virginia.

The focus of the gatherings is “Re-igniting the Poor People’s Campaign: Finishing the Unfinished Business of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr."

The Poverty Scholars Program brings together leading low-income community organizers from New York City and nationwide who are organizing in their communities around such issues as water privatization, ecological devastation, eviction and foreclosures, housing, health care, food, education, living wages and workers rights.

The Poverty Initiative nominated 45 veteran and emerging low-income leaders to participate in our first 2008-2009 class of “Poverty Scholars” and the three Poverty Scholars Program Strategic Dialogues. The Poverty Scholars Program has developed and continues to expand upon an innovative, intellectually rigorous, human rights based, popular education program/curriculum for grassroots activists towards building a movement to end poverty.

From August 9th -15th, more than 160 leaders from across the country and around the world will gather for a week in Charleston WV to study together, teach one another, and to work towards Reigniting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign Today. The Poverty Scholars Program will be hosted Charleston, WV by the Direct Action Welfare Group (DAWG). Applicants from more than forty organizations were selected to attend the Leadership School.
Complete list of participant organizations.

• Continuing to build a core of leaders in the movement to end poverty;
• Networking poor leaders/organizations from diverse communities across the country and around the world;
• Working together towards reigniting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People’s Campaign;
• Bringing Leaders together to educate one another in the history, lessons, and skills needed to build a social movement to end poverty led by the poor.  

• Current Economic Crisis
  
• History and lessons of the Poor People's Campaign
• Role of Religion in Organizing
• Importance of Education in Leadership Development
  
• Skills and organizing workshops in the role of a Human Rights framework in organizing
  
• Music, theater, art and culture, video/audio/web and other media and communications skills
  
• Projects of survival, issues of housing and homelessness
• New practices for new labor organizing
• And more!

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Impact

On November 5th, 2009, Poverty Scholars from New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Detroit gathered to report on the impact of the Poverty Scholars Program from the frontlines of the economic crisis.

Learn more.