Winston-Salem Launches Poverty Initiative

The mayor of Winston-Salem announced details Thursday of a new poverty initiative. It brings together people from around the community to tackle the problem head-on. 

Nearly a quarter of Winston-Salem residents live in poverty, according to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Mayor Allen Joines has appointed what he calls a “Thought Force” to study the issue and lead public discussions.

The group of 21 academic and civic leaders is organizing a series of community meetings on topics like housing, hunger and food insecurity.

Wake Forest University provost Rogan Kersh is chairing the committee. He says public input via the web will be an important part of the process.

“We will invite and embrace members of the community to contribute to the conversation,” says Kersh. “They could say hang on, you forgot about this, or wow that's an interesting idea, let me add or testify to the benefit of this change from my own experience, so this will be an open comment based website.”

Marlon Hunter is director of the Forsyth County Department of Public Health and a member of the “Thought Force”. He says poverty is a major factor in the health of a community.

“Poverty is a social determinant of health, which we've identified in our community with health assessments here in Winston-Salem and Forsyth County,” says Hunter. “By spending time working on those social determinants of health, it will help improve our health outcomes.”

Mayor Joines says the group's goal is to identify strategies to target poverty for future action.

“We hope to come up with 25 to 30 doable objectives that we will the ask City Council, the County Commissioners, The United Way, the Ministers Conference and any group we can think of to endorse it and accept it,” says Joines. “Then we can start implementing those objectives over the next two to four years.

Dates for the meetings have not been set, but organizers plan to hold them in January or February.

The public input meetings will follow the “World Café” method, which offers a simple, effective and flexible format for hosting large group dialogue. With this method, participants engage in a series of small-table discussions and change tables after each round of discussions. Each round is guided by specific prompts. Afterwards, participants share their observations and insights with the larger group, guided by a moderator.

 “We want to be able to gather a wide range of ideas and input from all corners of the community,” Kersh says.

*Follow Keri Brown on Twitter @kerib_news