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.