Components and Activities

To address adult poverty, the End Poverty Durham plans to establish the Durham Economic Resource Center (DERC) modeled after a component of the award winning Welfare Reform Liaison Program (WRLP) of Greensboro, NC.  The WRLP is noted for producing results.  During the first year at work, 7% of graduates report earning $15,000 or more, increasing to 17% for the second year, and 30% by the fourth year.  By the fourth year, 22% of those reporting earned over $20,000 (Successes, WRLP 2007).

• Resource Program (Fall 2008).  The Center will provide discounted products to member non-profit and faith–based organizations to alleviate basic needs among the poor, ill, and elderly by using products from the International Gifts In Kind Program.  This will stretch the resources of Durham’s poor residents by providing products at a discount that ordinarily they must purchase at full cost.  Poor residents are then able to use their limited cash to purchase other basic needs.  End Poverty Durham sponsored an introduction to the DERC, a free Community Giveaway at Antioch Baptist Church, on June 29, 2007.

• Community Resource & Action Program (Winter 2008).  The Center will foster and broker strategic partnerships among FBOs, CBOs, and businesses, as well as public and private organizations to help address the root causes of poverty.  We will promote strategies that are both place-based (in neighborhoods) as well as need-based (for specific populations such as former felons).

• Workforce Training and Development (Spring 2009).  Surplus products will also be used to establish a simulated workplace, a distribution warehouse and work-site where chronically unemployed and “hard-to-employ” individuals receive supervised on-the-job training and support services and follow-up.  Specific components of the training program will be designed based on workforce needs of the Durham business community, and on the assets and challenges of the targeted training population needing employment.