Today marked the beginning of a new, formalized relationship between Access and the Micah Center! After many years of shared hopes and visions for a just future, we are now taking official steps towards a working partnership. This relationship was kicked off during today’s staff meeting as we gained an understanding of Broad-Based Community Organizing (BBCO) under the guidance of Micah Center’s Director Allison Colberg.

Allison centered the meeting around introducing BBCO as a concept generally and locally, defining it as the action of building the capacity of community members towards leadership and creating change. To do so, we first had to understand the history of our current position as a society and as a city. We walked through the pressures we see facing families in our communities and as well as the institutions we see currently holding decision-making power. We observed that an institution’s power is directly correlated with their level of organized money or organized people, and families in our community may not feel like they have access to that power. This observation allows us to  begin to venture forward into more application-based thinking as we work to change outcomes within our communities. 

We believe that our partnership with the Micah Center will support our work of creating change at a systems level, and ultimately will support our mission of cultivating solutions to poverty. Stay tuned as we continue in our work together!