The Community Action Partnership is in the 2011 Combined Federal Campaign (CFC).
Our designation number is 80371.

2011 Community Action Partnership Annual Convention
August 23-26 in San Francisco

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REGISTER NOW!
Convention Discount Rates extended until August 5.
Please register now at the discounted rates.

Emerging Leaders Pre-convention – 3rd Annual Gathering
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 in San Francisco 11:30 to 4:30
Charge to attend: $60, includes lunch
Click here for information and the Registration Form

Click here to view a preliminary list of workshops
The complete list with days, times, and room numbers will be posted on our website this week.

Click here to download the Registration Form

Click here to view the Convention brochure

Watch our website for more Convention information as it becomes available.

Reserve NOW at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis

Please note that our block of rooms at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis is sold out. Rooms may still be available at the Marriott. If you have not yet booked your room yet, contact the Marriott now. http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/sfodt-san-francisco-marriott-marquis/

The US Census Bureau has announced that 2010 data for income, poverty and health insurance will be released on September 13, just weeks after the Partnership’s 2011 Annual Convention.

The data is generated from the Current Population Survey—the nation's primary source of statistics on labor force characteristics that provides the official annual statistics on the nation's income and poverty levels and a monthly snapshot of employment levels.

To read the news release, go to: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_wealth/cb11-135.html

 

Most of our Network’s community economic development leaders know and have worked with Dr. Ralph Lippman and Glenn Sanada from the California Community Economic Development Association. Ralph and Glenn will serve as valuable resources at our upcoming national convention in San Francisco, August 24-26. Joining them for the Friday, August 6th morning session, “How to Talk to Funders about Your Economic Development Project” will be Mark Weinheimer.

Mark Weinheimer

Mark Weinheimer will bring Economic Development Expertise to Community Action Annual Conference Mark Weinheimer is the principal of Weinheimer & Associates, a Washington, DC-based consulting firm that specializes in community development, a field that Mark has been involved with for 35 years. His experience includes leadership roles in the public sector, private consulting and management of nonprofit organizations. Mark’s consulting includes work in program development and administration, policy development, strategic and organizational planning, and organizational and program assessment. For example, he organized and managed a multi-year and multi-site grant program to heighten the involvement of faith-based institutions in community development.

He had a leadership role for many years in Living Cities: The National Community Development Initiative, a multi-institution consortium that funded activities in some two dozen large cities. He has also assisted public and private philanthropies form lasting partnerships to benefit community economic development activities. He recently led a group looking at the impact of a HUD grant program providing capacity building funds to local community development corporations nationwide. Before establishing his own consulting practice in 1989, Weinheimer worked at Seedco, where he helped to form partnerships between hospitals and universities with community developers, and at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, where he managed all of the organization’s grant and loan programs. He also worked at HUD’s Office of Neighborhood Development, Pennsylvania’s Department of Community Affairs, and the cities of Lancaster and Harrisburg, PA. Weimheimer has a degree from Franklin and Marshall College, of Lancaster, PA. He co-authored Community Development in the 1990s with Christopher Walker (Urban Institute Press, 1997) and several publications for the National Congress for Community Economic Development.

In April, Partnership staff attended the National Telecommunication Cooperative Association’s (NTCA) Broadband Adoption Summit, which focused on bringing broadband service to rural communities so that schools, businesses, hospitals and public safety groups can benefit from the latest technological advancements.

As a result, we are listed on NTCA ‘s new strategic outreach initiative webpage, Strategic Outreach: Connecting and Collaborating for Rural Communities, http://www.ntca.org/outreach.

The page highlights a diverse range of organizations—particularly those involved in health care, education, commerce and public safety—and shows how broadband is essential to each of these four areas. It is a resource for individuals looking to connect with other 3rd party entities with rural interests or gather more information about rural broadband. Also listed on the site are National Telecommunications and Information Administration and US Department of Agriculture Rural Development.

The Partnership is proud to support NTCA in its efforts to improve the quality of life in rural communities through the advocacy of broadband and other advanced communications infrastructure and services.

 

Thanks to Wade Henderson, President and CEO, and Nancy Zirkin, Executive Vice President for Policy at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the Partnership joined with more than 70 other prestigious national organizations in a letter to Congressional leadership calling for appointments to the new Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction who understand and support the needs of low-income and other vulnerable populations. The Partnership is a member organization of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

August 4, 2011

The Honorable Harry Reid, Majority Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Senate Majority Leader Reid and House Minority Leader Pelosi:

The undersigned organizations represent persons of color, women, children, low- to moderate-income workers, labor unions, people with disabilities, consumers, elders, people of faith, English language learners, LGBT people, educators, environmentalists, and many other Americans. As organizations with a tremendous stake in the outcome of the ongoing budget process, we urge you to appoint members to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction who will insist that the recommendations include sufficient revenue increases to reduce the deficit while preserving our ability to create jobs, rebuild the economy, and protect vulnerable people from the loss of vital services.

Your appointments to the Joint Select Committee will be among the most significant decisions you will make in the 112th Congress, with far-reaching implications. It is all but certain that half of the membership of the Committee will be comprised of individuals who adhere to an extremist philosophy involving the downsizing of our federal government, elimination of safety nets, and extending tax cuts and loopholes for those who need them the least.

Our organizations and the millions of Americans we represent are relying heavily on you to stand up to this radical approach. We believe it is essential that you appoint Committee members who will support the following principles:

Any deficit reduction agreement must include measures to put people back to work and rebuild the economy. The first round of deficit reduction under the Budget Control Act comes exclusively from $1 trillion in cuts that will kill jobs and weaken the recovery. This is on top of the cuts to the remainder of the 2011 budget adopted mid-year. If there is one point on which all economists can agree, it is that investment – in social and physical infrastructure, research and innovation, and worker productivity – is absolutely essential to getting people back to work in the short term and ensuring that our economy grows in the long run. The Committee must make this investment possible by ensuring that the next round of deficit reduction eliminates wasteful and unnecessary tax giveaways (i.e. Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, tax breaks for multinational corporations that offshore jobs, loopholes for private equity and hedge fund managers) and recommends new taxes for the ultra-wealthy.

The burden of deficit reduction must not be borne by low- and moderate-income individuals. As our nation’s economy continues to struggle, unemployment remains high, and there is a dire need to put people back to work. Countless numbers of Americans have been wiped out financially and will be forced to start their climb up the economic ladder all over again. A large aging population is gradually leaving the workforce and will rely on the promises made, decades ago, by programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Children, people with disabilities and other vulnerable populations continue to lack access to affordable health care and depend on Medicaid as a safety net – while other important services and programs, such as food stamps (SNAP), Supplemental Security Income,
education, Head Start, child care, jobs programs, environmental protections, low-income housing, and
emergency unemployment compensation are also more important than ever in today’s economy. Any
cuts to these programs are unacceptable because they will jeopardize the health, economic security,
and education of millions of Americans; will keep the economy from getting back on track; and will
place an even heavier burden on states that are already struggling to meet the needs of vulnerable
populations.

Any discretionary savings must rely at least as much on cuts in national security programs as
on spending cuts in non-security discretionary programs. While there is an effort to cut spending
across the broad array of annual discretionary spending programs, national security spending, which
comprises 61% of the discretionary budget, continues to grow. Without cuts to national security
programs, even very deep cuts to all other discretionary funding taken together will fall far short of
dealing with the deficit. We want a safe and secure nation. But national security programs should not
be immune from oversight and fiscal responsibility. We can responsibly reduce spending in this area
without compromising our nation's security.

Thank you for your consideration of our views. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Rob
Randhava, Senior Counsel at The Leadership Conference, at 202-466-6058.

Sincerely,

AFL-CIO AFSCME AIDS United Alliance for a Just Society American Association of School Administrators American Federation of School Administrators, AFL-CIO American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO Association of Education Service Agencies Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law Campaign for America's Future Campaign for Community Change Casa de Esperanza: National Latin@ Network for Healthy Families and Communities Children’s Defense Fund CLASP Coalition on Human Needs Common Cause Community Action Partnership Council for Opportunity in Education Courage Campaign CREDO Action Democracy for America Epilepsy Foundation Every Child Matters Education Fund Families USA Food Research and Action Center Friends of the Earth Half in Ten Health Care for America Now Hispanic Federation International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Workers of America (UAW) The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Legal Momentum MoveOn.org NAACP National Alliance to End Sexual Violence

National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO) National Association for State Community Services Programs National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities National Association of Social Workers National Coalition Against Domestic Violence National Council of Jewish Women National Council of La Raza (NCLR) National Education Association National Employment Law Project National Fair Housing Alliance National Gay and Lesbian Task Force National Network to End Domestic Violence National Organization for Women National Organization of Sisters of Color Ending Sexual Assault National Partnership for Women & Families National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition National Rural Education Association National Skills Coalition National Women’s Law Center National Women's Health Network NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby OMB Watch People For the American Way Planned Parenthood Federation of America ProgressNow Raising Women's Voices for the Health Care We Need Rebuild the Dream RESULTS SEIU Social Security Works United for a Fair Economy United Steelworkers (USW) US Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association USActionVoices for Progress YWCA USA

 

Congress needs to hear that ordinary Americans—low- and middle-income alike—should not lose jobs, health care, food and education while those at the top keep raking in tax breaks and military waste remains untouched. Thanks to Debbie Weinstein at the Coalition on Human Needs.

Watch It's a Binge on Top on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NXBsyjteXI

To read more, including the lyrics to the unusual performance, apologies to Rogers and Hammerstein, see Deborah Weinstein in the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deborah-weinstein/speaker-boehner-and-the-b_b_909555.html

If you’re coming to San Francisco for the Annual Convention, be sure to check out “Poverty: A-Z,” the special multi-media art exhibit sponsored by the Kansas Association of Community Action Programs (KACAP).

The exhibit, which aims to educate people about poverty in an innovative way, showcases real-life perspectives about living in or fighting against poverty (one for each letter of the alphabet) written by Community Action employees, volunteers, and program participants.

For more information, visit KACAP’s website, http://www.kacap.org/ProgramsandResources/KACAPOutreach/PovertyAZ.aspx AND see this article from the Summer 2011 issue of The Promise magazine.

Steve Manela, left, and Don Mathis

Steven Manela, Human Services Division Manager at Lane County (OR) Health and Human Services—a municipal Community Action Agency—participated in a recent White House Community Leaders Forum, held at the White House. Steve credits reading about this opportunity in a Partnership e news. He arrived in DC the day before the briefing and met with Don Mathis at the Partnership office and later with Oregon Congressional staff. During the White House briefings, Steve explained to the presidential staff that food stamp/SNAP participation in Lane County had doubled in the past year, unemployment and homelessness were growing, serious problems.

In response to Steve’s remarks, a White House official commented that Community Action had to use the same strategy that Planned Parenthood did when it was attacked, namely demonstrate to the White House (White House staff are not allowed to recommend lobbying Congress) the extent of Community Action support via letters, e-mails, personal contact, and support by community leaders and supporters.

Thank you Steve for carrying our message to the White House.

Open House for first HUD funded “green” housing complex for seniors in the nation

An Open House was held at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, July 15th at North East Manor, 4132 South Washington Street, North East. North East Manor is a 27 unit apartment complex for those 62 and older. The complex was funded using federal HUD section 202 dollars. According to HUD officials it is the first HUD funded 202 complex that has received LEED Silver certification in the nation.

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and the certification is issued by the Green Building Certification Institute which is an arm of the U.S. Green Building Council. North East Manor achieved LEED certification for energy use, lighting, water and material use as well as incorporating a variety of other sustainable strategies. LEED certified building saves money for families, businesses, and taxpayers, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and contributes to a healthier environment for residents, workers and the larger community.

A brief ceremony was held at 11:00 a.m. with comments from HUD officials, the builders, and Brad Moore from Congressman Mike Kelly’s office, according to Ronald J. Errett, CEO of the Community Action Partnership of Mercer County which is the sponsoring Agency for North East Manor. “We are delighted to bring this LEED Silver certified building to North East. It is consistent with our mission to allow senior citizens to have quality affordable housing options and to be energy conscious in doing that” said Errett.

For additional information please contact Joyce Blanke: jmb@capmercer.org or 724-342-6295.

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