What even is Community Action?

​By Rand Clark

I had been on the job for about a month. I found myself driving to Pueblo for the State Community Action Conference. I was fortunate enough to walk into a new job where I knew a few of the people I worked with and had a general sense of what was going on in my community through my volunteer work on the Tripartite Board. However, this whole “Community Action” thing was new to me.

Colorado, as I came to find out a few years into my job, does not administer CSBG like everyone else. In Colorado we have chosen to disburse CSBG funding primarily through units of local government. Across the majority of the country, CSBG funding is provided to local nonprofits known as Community Action Agencies. These local nonprofits embody the spirit behind the Economic Opportunities Act of 1964 and were challenged to combat poverty at the local level. As President Johnson said at the time, “the war against poverty will not be won here in Washington. It must be won in the field, in every private home, in every public office, from the courthouse to the White House.”

In my new role I had been tasked with building something new. For years we had used CSBG funds to provide one-time rent assistance payments to help those who had a demand for payment. Our community had grown unsatisfied with the results. We had begun to ask the question of whether our $250 assistance check was really helping.

I still vividly remember walking into a breakout session at the conference in Pueblo that would leave an indelible mark on me professionally. It was in “Introduction to ROMA” workshop. The facilitator of this workshop was this very distinguished gentleman with a head full of silver curly hair and the most epic mustache. Fred was his name. I was captivated by the notion of considering topics such as outcomes and versus outputs or multiple domain matrices. I was drawn into the challenge to build programs that impacted people’s lives and did not just provide a valuable service.

That week in Pueblo I was introduced to Community Action. I learned about the spirit of hope that embodies our work. I connected with the network’s desire to improve communities and see people’s live change.

It started that week with Fred. It started when I began to understand and embody the promise of Community Action. It started when I embraced my desire to make a meaningful impact in my community. This was the first step in my journey to becoming a CCAP.