idealist.org

Community Voices Heard is an organization of low-income people, mostly women on welfare working together to improve the lives our members’ families and all poor people in New York City. We are directed, run and being built by low-income people on welfare. We are a growing grassroots organization that uses public education, public-policy research, community organizing, leadership development, political education and direct action issue organizing, to build our membership and to organize around issues that are defined by our membership. While we focus on welfare reform, we broadly define “welfare activism” to be multi-issue, and thus must include issues such as education, training, jobs, housing, economic development and other community issues. We fill a crucial gap in that our organization connects public policy with grass roots organizing and leadership development.