Social Workers
in the
Movement to End Poverty
"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time.
But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."
Lila Watson
Who we are
Social workers and other human service workers who work to build a movement based in the unity and leadership of the poor. We work with and through member organizations of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign.
What we believe
- Poverty can be ended.
- As social and human service workers, our interests are one with those living in poverty.
- To end poverty, we must accomplish the program of the poor.
What we do
"Educate"
- Training programs, workshops, speeches, and conference and classroom presentations on the movement and on integrating economic human rights into social work practice at all levels
- Writings - newsletter articles, book chapters, popular and scholarly articles - on these topics
- Conferences and teach-ins jointly organized with member organizations of the PPEHRC and its educational arm, the University of the Poor
- Web-based resources through our library.
- Research, study groups, peer consultations/supervision, and field instruction focused on class dimensions of social work practice and the integration of an economic human rights perspective into practice, policy, and their supporting theories.
"Agitate"
- Collect documentation of violations of economic human rights
- Participate in demonstrations and rallies
- Sponsor teach-ins, speak-outs, and Truth Commissions
- Provide testimony and otherwise bear witness to the preventability of poverty and other consequences of the violation of economic human rights
"Organize"
- Support work for events and campaigns of the PPEHRC and its member organizations
- Resource development - food, clothing, housing, books, cash, cars, computers, child care, copying, phone cards, etc. etc. etc. - to sustain unpaid movement organizers
- Creation of local Economic Human Rights committees and organizations comprised of social workers, other allies, and people currently living in poverty, all together developing the leadership and program of the movement.
A project of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign
