LIFT is committed to combating the multi-generational cycle of poverty by providing comprehensive services to families in need. The significant education achievement gap that exists between students living in poverty and their higher-income peers is unacceptable. Research demonstrates that a child’s academic performance improves significantly when his or her family has stable income, safe housing, healthcare coverage, and sufficient access to nutritious food, yet support for the parents of children living in poverty continues to be far too limited in all of our communities.
LIFT has made it a priority to bolster student achievement by connecting parents to services, supports, and benefits that can place low-income families on the road to economic opportunity. LIFT sees five essential asset areas—basic necessities, employment/financial stability, housing, education and training, and health care—as vital to individual and family security and success. 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 client families 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.
Since 2009, LIFT has piloting its school-based approach to client service in the Chicago Pilsen community, the Columbia Heights neighborhood of DC, and most recently the Roxbury and Somerville communities of Greater Boston. With the success of these pilots, LIFT is examining strategies to roll out larger school-based strategies in connection with our cities’ public school systems and charter school networks so that LIFT can best serve at-risk children and their parents across the country.
