George Wiley Center

The George Wiley Center fights poverty by using grassroots organizing and direct action to make policy changes. Our mission is “to build a community that addresses human needs and redresses injustices."

We work with low-income and unemployed Rhode Islanders who are struggling against economic injustice. We organize community members to make direct impacts on various issues, such as stopping utility shutoffs, increasing food security and access to SNAP and universal school breakfasts, increasing the minium wage and acheiving living wages, and strengthening support for the unemployed. Through outreach and recruitment in low-income neighborhoods and to allies, we are able to mobilize members of the community impacted by poverty to fight for social change.

For over 30 years, the George Wiley Center has been a non-profit, 501(c)3 grassroots agency that organizes low-income community members to advocate for systematic changes aimed at problems associated with poverty. Named after the Rhode Island native and national civil rights activist and founder of the National Welfare Rights Organization, George Alvin Wiley, George Wiley Center members speak from personal experience and develop strategies that use a variety of tactics to push for systemic changes and create public policy changes that relate directly to their lives and the lives of others.