VISTA, Campaign for Working Families

Posted by on October 31, 2003

Organization: Campaign for Working Families/Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition
Project Director: Jean Hunt, Executive Director

The Campaign for Working Families? overall mission is to provide expanded income security to low-wage workers in the Philadelphia region by increasing their access to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and other federal credits, low cost financial services, improved financial planning, and public benefits.

The Campaign works in three ways to assist the efforts of low wage families to move into the middle class: 1) free tax assistance at neighborhood based sites to encourage filing for the Earned Income Tax Credit and other credits (child care, dependent care, education, retirement savings, etc.) that families may not have received in the past; 2) financial education workshops such as how to repair your credit, how to save for a home, what to look for in a loan, etc. These workshops help low-wage families save money on financial services and assist them in removing obstacles such as bad credit ratings that keep them in high risk categories; 3) counseling to guarantee that families receive all of the public benefits to which they are entitled including food stamps, child care subsidy and health insurance coverage. The

List tasks and activities of the AmeriCorps*VISTA Member(s) working under this Assignment which relate to the goals and objectives of the work plan.

Activities will include:
? Operational support for the tax campaign including designing site operations, training and data collection;
? Distribution, fulfillment and tracking of collateral materials (flyers, posters, banners, bookmarks);
? Assisting in planning three Campaign PR events (a kick off with the Mayor, new approaches to marketing financial literacy and asset building services, and an ?end-of-tax season results? event);
? Community marketing for the EITC sites including working with the Coordinator of the Community Outreach Associates (community members designing the outreach efforts); maintaining a calendar of all events, assisting in getting literature to events and community locations;
? Outreach and education activities for financial literacy/asset development workshops and Financial Advancement Network Clubs; VISTA will maintain a calendar for workshop schedules throughout the year; take minutes and staff the CLAD coalition; provide administrative support to the FAN clubs; help liaison with banks for provision of services and education programs;
? Technology support:
o CWF: assisting in designing data bases and data entry and generating reports for evaluation purposes; will support CWF technology/data needs during the tax campaign, will help maintain the communications data base; provide technical support to tax sites;
o UWSEPA: after the tax campaign (May through December) working with the Beehive advisory committee and One Economy team to consult on the selection and development of content for the Beehive website; will develop partnerships with content providers and web development providers; will contribute to local and community content development efforts including mapping community assets in selected low-income communities, maintaining community calendars, and facilitating community discussion boards; will develop and maintain online resources for asset development programs in the region.
? Community outreach for benefits counseling;
? Special support in the Latino community for an emerging asset development coalition designed to bring together a number of currently separate programs such as IDA?s, financial literacy, banking services in North Philadelphia?s Latino community. This volunteer will: schedule meetings with Latino organizations and leaders; develop trainings for organizations and individuals to help build the asset development coalition; staff coalition work – minutes, mailings, phone calls; assist in ways to develop evaluation systems to measure success and implementing those evaluation measures; do advocacy with community organizations to help them see importance of predatory lending and other financial services practices that affect the ability of families to build their assets; gather data to build the case about why these issues are of importance in this community; gather best practices and research.

skills and qualifications:

? Commitment to our mission;
? Comfort in working in diverse communities, including traveling in many neighborhoods;
? Basic organizational skills – ability to keep track of information, follow up, doing phone calls, setting up meetings;
? Responsible work habits including punctuality, following through on assignments;
? Basic computer skills, at least for most members of the team: Word, maintaining calendars, Excel, desktop publishing;
? One volunteer with advanced computer and data base knowledge (software) who can provide primary support to data functions of the Campaign and at the United Way;
? One bi-lingual volunteer interested in working with Ceiba and Congreso to support creation of integrated asset-development programs and activities;
? Flexible individuals able to adapt to changing circumstances and demands;
? Driver?s License and car preferred but not required;
? An interest in working in environments intensely focused on relationships with communities and organizations in order to promote coalitions for economic change for working families.