Building the FII Movement

We envision that one day all families across America will have access to the resources and opportunities needed to achieve their goals and dreams.

The fifty year war on poverty has not made poverty escapable. We believe our society should shift to a proven model of success. Investing in low and working income communities will incentivize upward mobility as opposed to only making poverty more tolerable. To do this, we are partnering with thousands of families across the country to shift the long-held perceptions, policies, and practices aimed at reducing poverty in low-income communities. We are shifting the focus from a top-down approach where families are seen as needing help and intervention to a bottom-up approach where families are the solution. This movement is demonstrating a new way to trust and invest in low-income families. Resident-led solutions are culturally relevant and highly sustainable, and as such, produce greater returns on investments

By deepening and expanding our support of families’ grassroots organizing skills and investing in those initiatives and projects, we are demonstrating how families can lift up their households, neighborhoods, and cities.

In doing this, we:

Invest

Invest in community residents’ initiative to improve their community.
Resident

Let the voices and knowledge of residents guide policymakers and advocates.
Leverage

Leverage the power of peer support and learning as an accelerant for family goal attainment.

Families as Decision Makers

Simply put, in order to slow the cycle of poverty in our society we believe that investing in the initiative of families is the most effective means to incentivize escaping poverty and making that progress sustainable. Our family-led movement aims to combine the hard work and initiative of low income communities with the trust and investment of decision makers. Together we will change how the country views and invests in the most marginalized members of our society.

Families are leading the movement through fellowships

Fellows are participating families who have been working with FII for at least 6 months and serve in a year-long leadership capacity focused on uplifting communities, advocating for changes that support FII’s mission of direct benefits to families, committing to ending poverty through supportive relationships, and organizing their communities around issues important to them. Each Fellow invests their time, energy, commitment and vision to their communities and embarks on activities that encourage community building and the transfer of skills, experiences, networks, and ideas.

Our family-led movement aims to combine the hard work and initiative of low income communities with the trust and investment of decision makers.

Join the Movement

As much as FII families are changing the way we think about poverty, we also need more Americans to change the way they think about families struggling with poverty.

At a time when there’s an important national debate about income inequality, we also have to think about the cultural gap between struggling working families and Americans who are more financially secure. FII families are leading the charge on a new conversation about struggling families to end stereotypes and other misconceptions. Join thousands of families in this movement.

Stories of Impact

Julia Mejia and the Determined Divas
Boston & Cambridge | Civic Engagement Education Housing
Inspired by our attendance at the 2015 Citizen University conference, our group, the Determined Divas, decided to engage other FII-Boston families and our communities around issues important to us.
- In 2016, we continued to use the social change grant to host the Elected Officials’ Dialogue Series to bring local policymakers, politicians, and the community together to discuss issues important to the community
- Used FII’s social change grant provided to run a series of voter registration drives, conducted issue-oriented community surveys, hosted a Boston City Council candidates’ forum before the last election, as well as spearheaded Get Out the Vote Campaigns
Read More

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