Colorado: Building a grassroots movement to cut poverty in half

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.