Cross-cutting Issues

Three issue areas are fundamental to every area of community impact.  Most impact areas in the community assessment include information about the influence of these issues, but in this cross-cutting issues section, we provide background on the overarching issues of poverty, and discuss in more depth the special concerns of people who are newcomers to the United States or who have limited English language proficiency. We also provide a racial equity analysis of several specific issues of importance to our community impact work.

Poverty is a part of every issue we wish to affect.

• Poverty
  Why poverty matters
  Children and poverty
  Race and poverty
  Strategies to reduce poverty
  Measuring poverty
  Barriers to escaping poverty

Racial inequality impedes our ability to impact community conditions and create opportunity for everyone in our community.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation developed a toolkit to assist with this kind of work. The approach described in The Race Matters toolkit  deals specifically with policies and practices that contribute to inequitable outcomes for children, families, and communities.

We are in the process of applying these tools to our planning and have used it to develop racial equity analyses of several issues related to our impact work.

• Racial Equity
• Racial equity and homelessness
• Racial equity and school readiness
• Racial equity and education

Our large immigrant and refugee population also challenges our human service system to provide culturally and linguistically competent services to promote equal access to our system for everyone in our community.

• Immigrants and Refugees
• US Immigration Policy
• Unique concerns for immigrants