Pathways Out of Poverty

Click here for more about our Community Needs Assessment and the Community’s Impact Agenda, Pathways Out of Poverty, that resulted from the assessment.

One Community. One Goal.

United Way believes we can achieve more together than any of us could do on our own. That’s why our board is committed to our mission of uniting people, organizations, and resources to improve lives in the Virginia Peninsula. By fostering community partnerships, we can champion shared goals and align resources to deliver innovative, holistic solutions to our community’s most pressing issues, with a focus on coming together to break the cycle of poverty.

Whether United Way is funding others to provide services, delivering services or coordinating collaborative programs, we are working together to create a path to stability and self-sufficiency. By focusing on the building blocks of health, education, and financial stability to create pathways out of poverty, we don’t just change lives – we change what’s possible.

What is Collective Impact?
  • Long-term commitments by a group of important actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem
  • Shared measurement system
  • Mutually reinforcing activities (reinforcing plan of action)
  • Ongoing Communication
  • Backbone support
How did we come to Pathways Out of Poverty?

In January 2017, UWVP hired an independent contractor to lead our Community’s Needs Assessment. Three phases were conducted:

Phase I Data was gathered through a demographic study of the Virginia Peninsula was well as a collection in Education and Workforce, Financial Well-Being, Public Safety, Children & Family, and Health & Social Environment

Phase II Community-wide survey of 6,000 surveys were sent out

Phase III Focus groups conducted in February for Faith community, Business leaders, Healthcare, Agencies, Government, Public Safety, and Education.

It was clear through the needs assessment process that our community must focus its efforts on helping people build pathways out of poverty.

Click here for our Community’s Impact Agenda, Pathways Out of Poverty

Click here for the notes from our Pathways Out of Poverty Community Forum breakout sessions.

ALICE Goal