Bill Kopsky became Executive Director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel in 1999. The Panel helps Arkansans improve their communities and develop policy solutions by taking collective action and building coalitions. In 1998, it organized the Arkansas Citizens First Congress, a coalition of 58 community organizations advocating for progressive policy change in Arkansas. The organizations...
Pope Francis is making his first-ever visit to the United States this week, greeted by screaming crowds in Washington, New York City and Philadelphia. Unlike most dignitaries, he’s not only visiting the White House, Capitol Hill and the United Nations, but also a mostly immigrant school in a low-wealth neighborhood, a homeless shelter and a prison.
Dubbed “the People’s Pope,” Francis...
Despite improving employment numbers, the U.S. Census Bureau announced Wednesday the poverty rate in 2014 remained virtually unchanged from 2013 – its fourth consecutive year of statistical stagnation. At 14.8 percent, 46.7 million Americans lived in poverty last year (defined as $24,230 or less for a family of four). There has also been negligible change in income for three years in a row,...
Ines Polonius spearheaded the merger of Community Resource Group and alt.Consulting to form Communities Unlimited, which offers infrastructure services and economic entrepreneurial growth strategies in seven states.
As Executive Director of alt.Consulting, Polonius worked with hundreds of small businesses in manufacturing, distribution, service and retail. Among the services Polonius...
The ongoing paucity of public and private investment in the rural South has caused outsized harm to African-American women and girls. In a study published this week titled “ Unequal Lives: The State of Black Women and Families in the Rural South ,” the Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative (SRBWI) found “on nearly every social indicator of well-being — from income and earnings to obesity and...
