Even though many levers exist with the potential to relieve poverty among the American Indian Alaska Native population, education is one area where the federal government itself has the immediate power to focus its resources and leverage change in these communities.

We need a national conversation on poverty in America, but we need the right people at the table. It needs to be a conversation rooted in the experiences of the true poverty experts — families who struggle every day to stretch their paychecks far enough to put food on the table, pay for childcare, and make the rent.

Head Start is a program of the Department of Health and Human Services that provides comprehensive education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families. With sequestration pending, funding for Head Start hangs in the balance.

Next month the Virginia Interfaith Center in partnership with Half in Ten will begin its fall advocacy trainings for members of the Commonwealth’s faith communities through a program entitled Social Justice University.

Sophie Feldman and Melissa Boteach demonstrate the bipartisan achievements of deficit reduction and poverty reduction between 1985 and 1997 in a telling timeline.

Melissa Boteach on the Bill LuMaye show discussing the Romney-Ryan budget.

From Catholic and Protestant bishops to the 40-religion advocacy group People Improving Communities through Organizing (PICO), representatives of various faiths have shown disdain for Ryan’s 2013 House Republican budget, which passed on March 29.

Can you really be poor if you own a flat-screen TV … or two? Depends on whom you ask. With income inequality at the center of the national political debate this year, it should be no surprise that conservatives and liberals are coming down on opposite sides of the tracks.

Medicaid and other safety net programs could undergo major changes if Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan win November’s election.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney made headlines earlier this year by stating, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.” But since that time, he’s been close-lipped about his actual plans to help struggling Americans and to repair the safety net.