LITTLE ROCK - The Clinton School of Public Service’s Center on
Community Philanthropy will receive a $175,000 grant from the
Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation to fund an initiative to fight
poverty in Arkansas communities.
The Emerging Communities
Initiative (ECI) will work with selected communities to develop
programs that best target poverty based on specific community
needs.
ECI will select three rural
communities ranging in population size of 5,000 to 15,000
beginning in the spring of 2009. Participating communities will
be identified through an extensive process that began with a
Community Center Resource and Feasibility Survey distributed by
the Center on Community Philanthropy in early 2008.
The idea of the project is to
empower community leaders to organize and implement their own
plans to fight poverty on a local level, said Charlotte
Williams, assistant professor and director of the
Center on Community Philanthropy.
“We promote a vision of
philanthropy that provides opportunities for communities to help
themselves,” Williams said. “Our goal for this grant is to
support community-led efforts to establish on-going programs to
reduce poverty. This grant will lay the ground work for
community development for years to come.”
“We are grateful to the Winthrop
Rockefeller Foundation for believing and investing in the vision
of the Center on Community Philanthropy to spawn
community-driven philanthropic efforts,” said Clinton School
Dean Skip Rutherford. “We are excited to move forward on this
project.”
For more information on the
Emerging Communities Initiative, please contact CeCe
Campbell at
cccampbell@clintonschool.uasys.edu, or 501-683-5656.