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History of Community Action Agency...National
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Community Action Agencies were created in 1964 as a part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty through the Economic Opportunity Act. The ultimate purpose of the “Act” was to give an opportunity for upward mobility to those who had been historically unable to participate in the mainstream of American life. A new Federal Department and a Cabinet seat were created for the Office of Economic Opportunity and Sargent Shriver was named to lead the effort.
The Economic Opportunity Act stated that the basic purpose of Community Action was “to stimulate a better focusing of all available local, State, private and Federal resources upon the goal of enabling low income families and low income individuals of all ages, in rural and urban areas, to attain the skills, knowledge, and motivations and secure the opportunities needed for them to become self sufficient.” Community Action Agencies were purposefully established under a new, neutral Department to enable equal access of government funding from all Departments.
The wording of the Act “stimulate a better focusing of all available . . .resources”, gave CAA a primarily catalytic mission: To make the entire community more responsive to the needs and interests of the low income by mobilizing resources and bringing about greater institutional sensitivity. A CAA’s effectiveness, therefore, is measured not only by the services which it directly provides but, more importantly, by the improvements and changes it achieves in the community’s attitudes and practices toward the poor, and in the allocation and focusing of public and private resources for antipoverty purposes.
To carry out this mission effectively, the CAA must work with three significant groups in the community: The low income; the public sector and the private sector.
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“The theory of community action was that what poor people needed were new neighborhood based organizations. As it were, there were many government efforts to help the poor- nutrition programs, employment programs, welfare programs- but there was no coordination among them, and no concerted attempt had been made to find out what services the people in the poor neighborhoods most needed. Under community action, the government would set up a kind of planning board in the neighborhood, the board would consult with the poor people there, and, eventually, a mission would emerge. In principle, a Community Action Agency could do anything- it was not an anti poverty program so much as a mechanism through which new anti- poverty programs would be invented. Also, rather than take on all the traditional functions of a government agency itself, it would be small and would coordinate the work of existing agencies. The only rule was that the solution to the neighborhood’s problems could not be imposed from above (that is, from Washington).”*
As the community brings together its diverse resources and talents; leveraging additional public and private resources; enlisting volunteers; involving consumers in problem solving; broadening the circle of economic activity and encouraging participation in public life, the productivity and cohesiveness of the entire community is enhanced and the barriers to economic participation and self sufficiency are lifted.
A Community Action Agency is
· A helping hand, not a handout
· A locally based organization
· An agency to help people help themselves
A Community Action is NOT:
· A welfare agency
· A federal agency
· A give away program
* Atlantic Monthly Magazine December 1988, The Unfinished War by Nicholas Lemann
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