Economic Growth

YR Media in the U.S. will support young people in describing how their lives have been affected by foster care and the juvenile justice system to counter stereotypes and engage diverse audiences. Young people living in poverty are at greater risk of interacting with these systems, both of which often further perpetuate poverty. Their personal reflections will provide powerful illustrations of the complex causes of poverty and the widespread impact it has while also highlighting affected youth's resilience and strength.

Wayne State University in the U.S. will showcase the inspiring stories of young innovators in Detroit who overcame hardship and carved out opportunities in community development projects, especially amidst the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. The team will recruit individuals from diverse backgrounds between 18 and 24 years old who are involved in transformative projects around the city. The young change agents will learn how to effectively document having to navigate social and economic adversity in the city in a way that captures their leadership and impact.

The Center for Popular Democracy's Fair Workweek Initiative in the U.S. will run a digital campaign to tell the real-life stories of how volatile working hours and other business practices harm families' financial security and well-being. The majority of Americans are paid hourly and are not given set working hours. This makes it difficult for families to plan for necessities such as child-care or pursue further education, leading to poverty, instability, and a feeling of powerlessness.

Women's Way in the U.S., working with a network of collaborators, will develop a fellowship program that trains and empowers women experiencing economic insecurity to share their stories. The purpose of the program will be to generate awareness of racial and gender inequities in economic opportunity and spur actions among the public and private sectors that improve family economic security in the Philadelphia region.

Outside the Lens in the U.S. will launch an app-based participatory media project in partnership with high school students, connecting communities to understand the historical barriers to economic mobility in redline communities, places where there exists a systemic denial of basic services. This phone application will enable data visualization, geo-tagging, interactive maps, and community engagement events to explore how historical economic barriers impact our cities in the past, present, and collective future.

Fahe in the U.S., through the Partners for Rural Transformation, will share the stories of people living in poverty across geographically, culturally, and racially distinct communities to highlight shared experiences and encourage their unification to reshape narratives and drive policy change. Negative stereotypes of people in poverty based on divisive factors such as race and class severely damage efforts to change those stereotypes by diluting their power as a group and detracting from the underlying systemic causes of poverty.

SaverLife in the U.S. will connect financial data with the perspectives and experiences of low-income individuals from their online community to shift perceptions on who they are and why they are poor and help drive client-informed solutions. SaverLife's online community supports over 330,000 low-income members across the U.S. to help them save for their futures. As a result, SaverLife has gained rich insights into the causes and effects of poverty and the household impact of social policy.

Sojourners in the U.S. will feature the voices of young people and marginalized communities in short films and articles shared on their digital and print platforms to change stereotypes about the causes of poverty, from one of personal responsibility to one that highlights structural and historic barriers to economic mobility.

The Voz Workers' Rights Education Project in the U.S. will develop a new legal clinic model and create a public campaign to raise awareness and understanding among the day-laborer community and its employers about the structural and historic barriers to their economic mobility. Day laborers, who are largely immigrants, refugees, and people of color, face low wages, insecure work, poor working conditions, and wage theft, causing many to live below the poverty level. Despite being disproportionately impacted, many day laborers do not qualify for federal stimulus funding for COVID-19.

The University of San Diego in the U.S. will launch a peer-to-peer education campaign to raise awareness of the unfair policies that prevent former foster youth from escaping poverty. Around 20,000 young adults age out of foster care each year in the U.S.; members of this population, which includes an overrepresentation of African American and Latino youth, suffer disproportionately from mental health issues and have little preparation and support to become self-sufficient.