Center for Social Policy Launches New Online Digest, “Connecting Research and Communities”

The Center for Social Policy (CSP) announces its first e-digest, Connecting Research and Communities, which will be forthcoming every two months.  Each issue will offer new insights from their current work and that of their affiliates. 

According to center director, Donna Haig Friedman, "Realistic pathways out of poverty are clearest to those with a lived experience; therefore, the ideas and insights of those directly affected by poverty will be integral to each issue as well."

In this inaugural issue, Professor Randy Albelda describes the underlying framework for the recently adopted federal Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) and then exposes the extent of poverty in our country, using this measure.  Links to poverty fact sheets will allow you to see how Massachusetts families are faring, relative to the standard federal poverty measure.  Albelda analyzes poverty  in Massachusetts by several categories including age, education status, ethnicity, gender, household status, nativity, race, and families with children.

The newsletter also allows the reader to dive deep into the lived experience of poverty in an interview with Julia Tripp, the center's constituent coordinator. Tripp is interviewed by Susie Devins, a long-term volunteer with the International Fourth World Movement, one of CSP's close partners. This interview is one part of an international action research initiative, sponsored by the Fourth World Movement, with the support of UNESCO, to explore the violence faced by people in chronic poverty and pathways toward peace.  A unique dimension of the research is its approach to ensuring that those most affected by poverty are central to knowledge generation. 

Friedman and her team welcome feedback on their first online newsletter.  "Over the coming months, we will invite opinion pieces from diverse viewpoints.  We believe that spaces for divergent opinions, accompanied by respect and openness, create the pathways for solving poverty."

Resources

e-digest, Connecting Research and Communities

For more information on the center's work, visit www.csp.umb.edu. 

Read bios of CSP affiliates:

• Senior Research Fellow Randy Albelda
• Research Assistant Julia Tripp
• Visiting Fellow Susie Devins

Share your ideas, reactions and feedback through the center's Facebook and Twitter links