Northwest Area Foundation, Central South King County Begin 10-Year Partnership to Reduce Poverty

Northwest Area Foundation, St. Paul, and Central South King County Venture (CSKCV) have announced the start of a 10-year partnership to reduce poverty in the communities of Burien, Renton, SeaTac, Skyway/West Hill and Tukwila in the Seattle, Washington region. CSKCV, which developed a strategic plan for the partnership, will receive $10.2 million from the foundation to support the partnership. CSKCV will leverage this funding to better identify the reasons for persistent poverty, attract investments and create collaborations that will span its communities and address poverty at its roots. The Children's Home Society of Washington will serve as the fiscal agent for the partnership.

"We believe a community has a greater chance of reducing poverty if it develops and owns its comprehensive initiatives," said Karl Stauber, president and CEO of the Northwest Area Foundation. "Because poverty is complex, solutions need to be multidimensional and integrated if they are to be sustainable and have lasting impact. The five communities that form Central South King County Venture worked together to develop a unified vision and long-term plan that addresses the many systems that affect people in poverty in its communities. We are excited to link arms with them in this effort."

CSKCV will play a unique role within its communities. It will be neither a foundation nor a charity, which usually fill grant requests. It will not operate as a conventional nonprofit, which usually delivers goods or services directly to community members. Instead, CSKCV is a not-for-profit organization that will identify the systemic problems that promote persistent poverty, and then address these problems by fostering collaborations across its communities and across the public and private sectors. It will work through other organizations. The partnership will also encourage investments and involvement from outside its communities.

"We are communities of great spirit," said Ken Curl, who is on the CDKCV planning committee, works for King County and is an advisor to Renton's Black Parents Association. "This partnership gives us a chance to identify and build upon unrecognized skills and resources. It is because of these local assets that we believe we can succeed. We are already feeling the benefits of the connection we made during the planning process, and we look forward to getting more community members involved and putting our plan to work."

The partnership developed its vision and strategic plan with the involvement of residents, nonprofits, service providers, and business and civic leaders from across the area. These collective efforts spanned nearly four years and included five large meetings attended by about 1,600 people. Because of the great ethnic diversity of this area, meeting organizers commonly employed several foreign-language interpreters to encourage full participation by groups often excluded from community decision-making. The partnership plans to publish the strategic plan in 13 languages to promote continued engagement: Bosnian, Cambodian, Chinese, Croatian, English, Laotian, Russian, Serbian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

CDKCV's plan strategies are:

• Improve family stability.
• Expand economic opportunity.
• Invest in children and youth.
• Build strong communities.

One of the foundation's major goals is to gather lessons learned and share them with other communities striving to reduce poverty for the long term. "We believe communities must increase their skills, and step up the application of these skills, in four key areas if they are to reduce poverty in a lasting way," said Stauber. These four critical outcomes are: Asset identification and development; expansion of economic opportunities; capabilities and knowledge to design, lead and implement sustainable change; and use of inclusive decision-making. "We look forward to sharing lessons learned with other communities throughout the region and across the country."

The Northwest Area Foundation has established six other partnerships to date to reduce poverty for the long term: Partners for Prosperity in Eastern Idaho; The NorthCentral Montana Community Ventures Coalition; NorthWay Community Trust, in north Minneapolis; Miner County Community Revitalization, South Dakota; Central Oregon Partnership; and the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, headquartered in Little Canada, Minnesota. The foundation is exploring an additional five partnerships.

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