Meet our State Coalitions: Minnesota

The Half in Ten campaign recognizes that we won’t cut poverty in half by 2020 without grassroots activists across the country calling for change. With that in mind, we are working with coalitions in several states to make the half in ten goal a reality.

Three Minnesota organizations are embracing the Half In Ten campaign: the Affirmative Options Coalition, the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition, and A Minnesota Without Poverty. The three organizations have already collaborated on moving an agenda forward to end poverty in Minnesota. The opportunity to work with Half In Ten was an opportunity to carry the message that Minnesota cannot make substantive progress on ending poverty without a renewed and serious federal commitment to tackle poverty. The three Minnesota partners will collaborate on engaging constituencies in the low-income, faith, nonprofit, and business sectors in a shared agenda on tackling poverty.

2010 will be a year to make visible the growing public support for ending poverty. In particular, the effort in Minnesota will focus on winning legislation that creates a tool for the state legislature to measure the impact of potential legislation on poverty, to launch a legislative-citizen workgroup to develop proposed policies to improve Minnesotans’ ability to accumulate and secure assets, and to revive a wage subsidy program that could help put thousands of low-income Minnesotans into jobs during this recession.

The Affirmative Options Coalition is a coalition of nonprofits-those directly serving low-income Minnesotans and those who advocate for better public policies.

The Joint Religious Legislative Coalition is faith-based coalition guided by God’s vision of the common good as reflected in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. JRLC mobilizes religious communities to influence public policy in Minnesota.

A Minnesota Without Poverty is a statewide movement to end poverty in Minnesota that was launched by the faith community to seek out partnerships with allies in other sectors, including the business sector.