Community-Based Poverty Initiative
What does it take to end poverty — one community at a time?
For generations, poverty has been treated as one of society’s most persistent realities. The Community-Based Poverty Initiative begins with a different premise: it does not have to be.
For the Bergel Institute, that question is not an accusation. It is an invitation to examine whether the way our efforts are organized is producing the outcomes we should expect.
Poverty rarely reflects one obstacle. Employment, housing, transportation, education, health, childcare, financial access, safety, and social connection can reinforce one another — often within the same community.
What if instead of treating the symptoms, we address the causes?
The goal is not to manage poverty better. The goal is to eradicate it.
CBPI asks what happens when residents of a community, as well as the organizations and groups in or near to it, come together with one shared objective: to create meaningful pathways toward economic mobility and stability for every person who lives there.
How the model works
Turn shared ambition into coordinated action.
CBPI is designed as a disciplined community process: understand what is holding people back, align the actors with the capacity to respond, act, measure what changes, and adapt until progress becomes visible.
Understand
Use local data and lived experience to identify the barriers most responsible for limiting economic stability and opportunity.
Align
Bring together institutions, residents, funders, employers, and civic leaders with relevant resources, authority, and relationships.
Act
Build practical responses around the actual obstacles facing people in that community — not around institutional silos.
Measure
Define success before implementation and track whether the work is producing meaningful improvement in people’s lives.
Adapt
Keep what works, change what does not, and use learning to strengthen the next round of community action.
No single institution controls the conditions that shape poverty. CBPI is built around the opposite idea: a community can align across those boundaries around the outcomes that matter most.
The CBPI Action Guide
What could community-level action actually look like?
The Action Guide translates the model into practical starting points. The examples are not prescriptions. They are prompts for identifying unused capacity, removing specific barriers, and building locally relevant pathways to opportunity.
Launch a Youth Wealth-Building Program
Give young people practical experience earning, saving, investing, and building something of their own — before adulthood.
See possible action steps
- Real skills: prioritize hands-on business experience and financial capability.
- Seed funding: create small micro-grants through a simple local pitch process.
- Long-term wealth: introduce saving, investing, and compound growth early.
- Mentorship: connect young people with experienced local business leaders.
Create a Shared Commercial Kitchen
Use underused community space to reduce one major barrier to food entrepreneurship: affordable access to compliant commercial facilities.
See possible action steps
- Find unused space: explore churches, community centers, or institutional kitchens.
- Build compliance in: involve the appropriate local agencies from the beginning.
- Keep access realistic: consider sliding-scale or subsidized use.
- Add business support: pair space with mentorship, marketing, and financial guidance.
Help New Neighbors Build Economic Stability
Coordinate local institutions around the concrete obstacles that can keep new residents from full economic participation.
See possible action steps
- Create a trusted hub: establish a reliable place to navigate local resources and systems.
- Address language and credit: connect workplace-specific language support with financial-system navigation.
- Recruit employers: build entry pathways with local businesses.
- Use peer mentorship: connect newer residents with established community members.
CBPI will not be built by one organization. It will be built by communities willing to align around a goal large enough to matter.
We are looking for anchor partners.
Anchor institutions can help create the conditions for a CBPI to take root — bringing resources, relationships, convening power, and a commitment to measurable outcomes.
- Help convene people around a shared community objective.
- Support local assessment, implementation, measurement, and learning.
- Open access to expertise, networks, facilities, capital, or opportunity.
- Help demonstrate what coordinated community action can achieve.