Brewed Fresh Daily

From the PD yesterday:

Some community leaders are challenging Mayor Jane Campbell's plan to fight poverty. They say it excludes the voices of the poor and needs to include more representatives from the suburbs and business community. At least one critic plans a poverty-fighting effort of his own. City Councilman Zack Reed said he plans to invite impoverished residents of Cleveland to his own "grassroots summit" at Cuyahoga Community College on Nov. 13. "We're going to ask them what are the three most important things to get them out of poverty," Reed said. "We're looking for a bottom-up solution. What I saw from the last summit [held by the mayor on Sept. 3], it's top - down."

Is it an either/or proposition, or can we work on poverty from both the top down and the bottom up?

Campbell said poverty is "a big enough issue" for everyone to address but questions Reed's approach. "We're focusing on solving the problem," she said. "Apparently, he's focusing on identifying it." As Cleveland tries to shed its unwelcome ranking of being the No. 1 impoverished big city in the nation, there are disagreements about how to do it and who should be involved.

Is he focusing on identifying it? Or is Reed going right to the people to find out what their needs really are?

Campbell said many of the resources and manpower to fight poverty already exist and what's needed is a focused, collaborative effort, not a new twist. "The goal isn't to have a commission on poverty and a poverty czar," she said. "All too often in this town, people identify a problem and create a new organization. I think there is an important step missed in that: Find out who already is doing it."

It's good to know we aren't going to create a new org. I hope the effort is to connect the orgs that already exist. How do we find out who's working on what if we don't already know?

That's why after she read the headline about Cleveland's poverty woes, she called about 40 people she has worked with who she said "have a passion for this" and asked them to join her effort. Many of them are now members of six leadership teams Campbell created to address the areas she and her advisers saw as critical in the chain of poverty: early childhood/preschool; school-age; adult; job creation and retention; housing; and technical/advocacy.

A great group of established leaders in their respected fields. Who's keeping an eye out for the emerging leaders and other people with passion and connecting them with these people?

Cuyahoga County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones said he favors harnessing existing resources rather than trying to create new ones, but he would like to see the focus narrowed even further, to four areas: education (preschool through college); work force development; economic development and employment; and family structure, which he said should address teen pregnancy and integrating fathers into families. "There's your four horsemen of the poverty apocalypse right now," Jones said.

Why narrow the focus? Is something as large and complex as poverty something that you can address by putting all your eggs in four baskets?

Representatives from the county will be a part of the mayor's leadership teams, but Campbell said this is the city's problem and it will take the lead. "This is about the city . . ." she said, "about the people in the city and so if the county is in a supportive role, that's great. If there are regional people who want to be welcomed, that's great." Jones said that attitude surprises him. "I applaud the desire by the elected officials of the city of Cleveland to quote, handle their own business, unquote, but when it comes to poverty, their business is our business and all of our concern," he said.

Does Cleveland have all the resources it needs to deal with this problem? Doesn't Cleveland's economy have an impact on the region and vice versa?

Greater Cleveland Partnership President Joe Roman, a member of the mayor's job creation and retention team, said local business leaders have been meeting for months to discuss how to bring more jobs to Cleveland, even though many did not attend the mayor's poverty summit. "The energy level is truly there," he said. To pull everything together, Campbell has asked Greg Brown, the new executive director of the Center for Community Solutions, to present a strategy to make existing poverty organizations and resources more efficient. "The goal is to mobilize the entire community to bring Cleveland out of poverty," Campbell said. "We haven't set the milestones yet. We'll be doing that along the way."

What's the entire community? How will we mobilze them? Thoughts?