Prepare your community for a visit from the Legislative Commission to End Poverty
Members of the Legislative Commission to End Poverty in Minnesota by 2020 will hold a series of “listening sessions” through out Minnesota. The Coalition encourages interested individuals to attend the listening sessions. These listening sessions will provide you with an opportunity to share your perspectives on poverty and what Minnesota should do to address it.
We encourage you to use the “listening sessions” to help the Legislative Commission come to understand that Poverty is:
- Too little income to meet today’s basic needs (either through wages or the safety net)
- Too few assets - to get ahead and to cushion tough times; and
- Too much isolation
As you help the Commission come to understand poverty, keep the following in mind:
- The Legislative Commission is in its first of three phases of work: this phase is to focus on understanding what poverty is, what it means to Minnesota, who is impacted by poverty, what the measure of poverty is and what it would be like to not have poverty.
- The statewide visits are one of the most critical elements of this phase.
Think about how the listening sessions can:
- Reveal the cost of poverty to all of us.
- How does the existence of poverty hurt local businesses, schools, quality of community life, etc?
- Make visible the extent of poverty in Minnesota.
- We pride ourselves on being a low-poverty state - but poverty is real in Minnesota and as damaging as it is anywhere else. Where does poverty “hide” in your community? What are the unseen deprivations of poverty?
- Demonstrate that Poverty is experienced differently in a myriad of ways by a wide range of people in very diverse circumstances.
- It is not helpful to picture “the average person in poverty.”
- Clarify that poverty is a problem of an economic system with gaps and problems - not a problem of broken people.
- People are working and poor? In what sort of jobs at what sort of wages? People are struggling to find work - why can’t they? People are struggling with disabilities and illness and work - what do their challenges look like?
- Demonstrate that there are many Minnesotans who want and expect our state government to respond to problems of poverty.
- Who in your community is not in poverty but is able to say how poverty impacts them - the value of their homes, their children’s schools, their pride in the compassion and fairness of their community, etc.?
Specific hopes and concerns we have heard from commission members
- Do not let the pride in successful programs over-ride the message of the unmet needs of those in poverty.
- The visits should be about three-quarters informal conversations (e.g. home visits, one-on-ones, small group conversations) and one-quarter formal (e.g. tours, hearings, panel discussions).
- The commissioners want to get outside population centers and understand what poverty means in rural areas.
- The commissioners should help to have their attention focused on what are the systemic problems state government can address - as opposed to what individual charity can do to lessen the harm of poverty.
- Help strategize on how the visiting commissioners can hear from local elected officials, business leaders and others about their perspectives on poverty in their region. Who is a key opinion leader in your community?
- Remember that one visit cannot cover the landscape in all that commission members should know: think about what few experiences or opportunities can carry the most impact.