OUR APPROACH
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Mission
LIFT’s mission is to combat poverty and expand opportunity for all people in the United States. We envision a day when all people in our country will have the opportunity to achieve economic security and pursue their aspirations.
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What We Do
LIFT is a growing movement to combat poverty and expand opportunity for all people in the United States. LIFT currently runs centers staffed by trained volunteers in Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, to serve low-income individuals and families.
LIFT clients and volunteers work one-on-one to find jobs, secure safe and stable housing, make ends meet through public benefits and tax credits, and obtain quality referrals for services like childcare and healthcare. Simultaneously, the LIFT experience pushes volunteers to grapple with our country's most challenging issues related to poverty, race, inequality, and policy. Since LIFT's founding, over 5,000 volunteers have served more than 30,000 individuals and families.
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Theory of the Problem
Nearly 40 million Americans—one in eight individuals—live below the poverty line.1 According to the federal poverty measure, a family of four is considered below the poverty line if it earns less than $22,050 a year.2 This translates into an average of $15 per person per day to cover all needs, from food and bus fare to doctor’s appointments and utility bills.
The implausibility of living on this amount of money in America today is alarming, but even more concerning is the reality that the number of Americans living in poverty will significantly—and precipitously—grow in the coming months and years as the economic downturn is fully realized.3
Poverty is a complex and multi-faceted problem and all of its associated issues—unemployment, homelessness, hunger, illiteracy, health care costs, and more—are interlinked. Yet our social services system does not reflect this reality. In order to secure needed resources, poor families must navigate highly complex and confusing bureaucracies, making access to basic services and benefits challenging.
On the policy front, we have failed to make the elimination of domestic poverty a national priority despite the amount we as a country know about the persistence and growth of poverty in the United States. We have not prioritized the necessary policies and investments that could pull millions of families out of poverty.
1 “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008,” U.S. Census Bureau
2 “The 2009 HHS Poverty Guidelines: One Version of the [U.S.] Federal Poverty Measure,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
3 ”Simulating the Effect of the ‘Great Recession’ on Poverty,” Emily Monea and Isabel V. Sawhill, The Brookings Institution
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Theory of Change
With a mission to combat poverty and expand opportunity for all people in the United States, LIFT’s model pursues two distinct paths. First, low-income individuals (clients) work with trained volunteers to obtain access to necessities—secure income, housing, health care, and education—that enable families to survive and thrive. LIFT’s services are free of cost and without eligibility requirements, ensuring that any individual in need can access resources.
Second, LIFT trains a corps of volunteers in a variety of issue areas to prepare them to work within the context of client needs. Their exposure to the challenges presented to low-income families serves as a transformative experience, and LIFT alumni go on to pursue careers across all sectors and become lifelong leaders in the effort to improve the practices and policies that aim to eliminate poverty.
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Path Out of Poverty
LIFT believes that there are five essential asset areas—basic necessities, employment/financial stability, housing, education and training, and health care—that are vital for individual and family success on the path out of poverty. By working one-on-one with LIFT volunteers to find jobs, secure safe and stable housing, make ends meet through public benefits and tax credits, and obtain quality referrals for services like childcare and health care, LIFT clients are able to holistically address their immediate and long-term needs while making concrete steps towards realizing their greater dreams and aspirations.
In the process of working toward their goals, LIFT clients develop an important internal “toolkit” for progress and resiliency that enables them to move forward independently and bounce back from challenges and setbacks. With the support of LIFT volunteers, clients strengthen their goal-setting abilities, problem-solving skills, knowledge of key community resources, self-confidence, and ability to advocate for themselves and their families.
