Last year’s recovery act included pivotal steps to enhance and transform the lives of Americans living in poverty. One such step was the creation of the TANF Emergency Fund, a $5 billion fund designed to help states meet the growing need for assistance and increase employment opportunities available to low-income families. Since its establishment, at least 35 states and the District of Columbia have used the fund to create 240,000 subsidized jobs for low-income and long-term unemployed workers.

These jobs have played a critical role in providing employment opportunities and helping states to meet the rising need for services resulting from the Great Recession. Yet if Congress does not extend the TANF Emergency Fund beyond its expiration date of September 30, 2010, states will be forced to halt their successful subsidized jobs programs and will no longer be able to offer the assistance to help families weather the economic storm.

Write your senators and representative and urge them to extend the TANF Emergency Fund today!

The Half in Ten partners in Minnesota are focused on the immediate, as well as plans for the winter. The Affirmative Options Coalition has been working with its members to urge our state’s two senators to renew funding for the emergency TANF Emergency Fund. Minnesota has been able to invest $11 million from TANF into creating short-term, skill-building jobs for parents on the state’s welfare to work program. The coalition is working with nonprofit employment services agencies to identify participants and employers helped by the program who are willing to tell their individual stories to news media—and to Senator Al Franken and his staff.

A Minnesota Without Poverty is planning a major statewide convention for December 9th to once again draw attention to the need to tackle poverty in Minnesota. All three candidates for governor have been asked to commit to attending that event if they are elected. Two of the candidates have agreed to do so if elected. The event will also feature web-linked connections around the state.

August has been a very busy month in Arkansas with our fight to cut the poverty rate. We have concluded all of the town hall meetings that we helped facilitate and we began reporting back to the Arkansas Legislative Task Force on Reducing Poverty and Promoting Economic Opportunity. Members of the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families staff reported at the task force’s public hearing on recommendations from the town hall meetings. A common theme was the need for governments and community organizations to be visible and active in impoverished areas. The time for action is now!

AACF has also been in an active dialogue with both Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Sen. Mark Pryor’s offices to advocate on behalf of federal policy issues that help keep people out of poverty. Both senators have expressed interest in supporting the extension of the refundable Child Tax Credit, leaving the earning threshold at $3,000. Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel has also partnered with local law enforcement and the national “Fight Crime: Invest in Kids” network, advocating the tax credit extension as a means of keeping children out of poverty and out of trouble with the law.

The Colorado Half in Ten campaign held a community meeting in August to discuss real solutions to reducing poverty in our community. The event attracted about 50 people from across the state, plus State Senator Evie Hudak. The diverse crowd discussed realistic and meaningful solutions to reducing poverty in specific ways. The group divided into five committees to find solutions to problems faced in education, job expansion, invisibility, oppressive systems, and housing.

The Colorado Half in Ten campaign is leading community meetings throughout the state—from Grand Junction to Alamosa to Boulder—to compile personal stories and solutions from those directly affected by poverty. It plans to then share the compiled information with the Economic Opportunity and Poverty Reduction Task Force, a body of the state legislature charged with cutting poverty in Colorado in half over the next decade. You can read stories and solutions from Colorado Half in Ten’s meetings on the Economic Opportunity Poverty Reduction Task Force blog.

Colorado has also doubled its individual Half in Ten supporters and expanded organizational endorsers to include homeless advocates, faith leaders, job training sites, and others directly working with ending poverty.

The first thought that comes to many peoples’ minds when they think of Colorado is the Rocky Mountains and ski resorts. It may be surprising to hear that in the same state where many escape for vacation, the child poverty rate is growing faster than anywhere else in the US.  The disadvantages which these children face make them more likely to perform poorly in school, have inadequate health, and struggle as adults.

Luckily, it does not have to be this way and there are people committed to the idea that no Coloradan should live in poverty. The Half in Ten Colorado coalition brings together people from a wide variety of backgrounds, from policymakers to faith leaders, to work towards the goal of cutting poverty in half by 2020.

Click here to read commentary on the Colorado Half in Ten Coalition by the Boulder Daily Camera.

August 31, 2010, 12:00pm – 1:15pm

About This Event: As Congress returns from recess, they are poised to commence the biggest tax debate since the Bush tax cuts were passed in 2001 and 2003. The debate thus far has centered on whether or not the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans should be allowed to expire.

But what are the stakes for middle and low-income Americans in the tax debate? If conservatives hold the tax package hostage to budget-busting high-income tax breaks, what do the middle-class and low-wage workers stand to lose?

Join us for a conversation on the upcoming tax debate, and why Congress must act this year to make the tax code work for working families.

Introduction by: Neera Tanden, Chief Operating Officer at Center for American Progress Action Fund

Keynote address: Jason Furman, Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy; Deputy Director of the National Economic Council Featured Panelists:

Michael Linden, Associate Director for Tax and Budget Policy, Center for American Progress Action Fund Barbara Izquierdo, EITC recipient and participant in the Witnesses to Hunger Program Meg Newman, VITA site coordinator

Moderated by: Melissa Boteach, Half in Ten Campaign Manager, Center for American Progress Action Fund

A light lunch will be served at 11:30 a.m.

Click here to RSVP for this event For more information, call 202-682-1611 Location

Center for American Progress Action Fund 1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor Washington, DC 20005

Map & Directions Nearest Metro: Blue/Orange Line to McPherson Square or Red Line to Metro Center Streaming Video

Click here to watch the event live.

The Half in Ten campaign joined 127 other national organizations last week to urge Congress to pass legislation that is critical to the well-being of our nation’s children. Nearly 1 in 4 children lived in a household struggling with hunger in 2008, and research shows that 1 in 3 are either obese or overweight. That makes it a critical national priority for Congress to reauthorize the nation’s two cornerstone child nutrition laws—the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 and the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act—collectively known as Child Nutrition Reauthorization

Contact Congress NOW!

Child nutrition programs such as school meals; the WIC nutrition program for women, infants, and children; and summer and afterschool feeding programs help protect our most vulnerable children from hunger. These programs provide many low-income children with their only fully balanced meal—or sometimes only meal—on any given day.

Write your Senators and Representative!

Congress is running out of legislative calendar days to complete the reauthorization before the bills expire on September 30. If it does not reauthorize the child nutrition laws this summer, millions of children could miss out on improved access to the food they need. Write your members of Congress and tell them that the health of our nation’s children depends on Child Nutrition Reauthorization.

That is why you need to contact Congress TODAY!

Half in Ten’s state partner Arkansas Advocates for Children & Families announced last month that it would be organizing a town hall meeting to discuss issues surrounding poverty in Arkansas. AACF joined with the Legislative Task Force on Reducing Poverty and Promoting Economic Opportunity on a hot July day to welcome almost 50 people at the event. The group was split into two small groups with one focusing on public health and education issues, and the other focusing on business development and community organizing. AACF also participated in a similar event in Dumas, Arkansas, and will work with the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute on another town hall meeting later this month.

As Half in Ten’s partner, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families is leading the effort to compile all of these findings from meetings statewide and deliver a report to the governor in November. AACF Executive Director Rich Huddleston serves as the co-chair of this taskforce along with state Sen. Joyce Elliott.

In other news, Rich Huddleston highlighted our Half in Ten campaign work during a panel discussion at the Clinton Presidential Center on July 15, 2010. The group addressed issues of childhood hunger, obesity, and poverty to more than 200 attendees.

The Colorado Half in Ten campaign is currently planning for the upcoming community meeting on real solutions to reducing poverty. The community meeting will present Half in Ten policy solutions and include a discussion on what solutions individuals think would be viable for reducing poverty in their own neighborhoods. This community meeting is planned to be the first of many across the state to get input from diverse communities. 

“What are Real Solutions to Reducing Poverty?” will be held on Monday, August 2 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the Blair-Caldwell Library at 2401 Welton Street in Denver. Light refreshments will be provided and child care upon advanced request. To RSVP, contact Bridget Kaminetsky at 303-628-0925 or bridget@9to5.org.

Virginia’s Half in Ten campaign is building momentum. The Blank Street Project is filming roving documentaries of poverty featuring Virginians talking about jobs and homelessness. We started our legislative strategy this month by meeting with state Sen. John Watkins, chairman of the Unemployment Insurance Commission at the Virginia General Assembly, to talk about extending unemployment insurance. The Half in Ten coalition is forming and we have hosted conversations with major partners about collaboration and policy areas on which the Half in Ten coalition will focus.