Center on Poverty, Work & Opportunity

Spotlights

Nichol awarded Faith Active in Public Life Award

The NC Council of Churches presented Gene Nichol with the award on April 11 at the Council's 2013 Legislative Seminar. Nichol also gave the keynote address.

“The Council gives only two awards, so those who receive them represent the highest level of service to our organization and to the people of North Carolina that we could ever expect and hope for,” said George Reed, the NCCC’s Executive Director.

Podcast of Nichol's keynote address.

Director Nichol delivers keynote at Harvard symposium on Gideon v. Wainwright

Gene Nichol was a featured speaker at a Harvard Law and Policy Review symposium commemorating the 50th anniversary of Gideon and reflecting on the current state of access to legal services in the U.S.

In Plain Sight: Poverty in America Highlights Community Empowerment Fund

The NBC News Series, In Plain Sight: Poverty in America, recently highlighted the issue of the unbanked or underbanked and how the lack of access to a financial and savings vehicle affects many in poverty. The article showcases a local organization, the Community Empowerment Fund, and the work they are doing with low income individuals in the Triangle to build job skills, financial literacy and economic opportunity.

Seeing the Invisible: Yearlong News & Observer Series Published

This year, Director Gene Nichol of the UNC Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity will write a monthly column, Seeing the Invisible, about poverty in North Carolina to be published in the News & Observer on the last Sunday of each month.

We hope you will join us in this examination of the faces and issues of poverty in our state.

• Introduction: In NC, poverty pervades as we evade, January 27.
• Second article: What are we doing for the least of these?, February 24.
• Third article: Shocking burden of $800 light bills, March 30.
  • Subsequent article and opinion piece by the N&O on high electrical bills.
  • State Senators Buck Newton and Angela Bryant are co-sponsors of Senate Bill 720, introduced April 2, that would require the agency that provides electricity to many towns in eastern NC to negotiate with Duke Energy to transfer or sell its ownership interest in five electricity-generating plants. The debt incurred in purchasing this interest is one of the reasons that some residents of eastern NC face outrageously large electricity bills.
• Fourth article: Full of courage, smarts, yet facing empty future, April 27.

Truth and Hope Poverty Tour in North Carolina

The Truth and Hope Poverty Tour will be a continuing project of the Poverty Center. For more information, please visit the Poverty Tour section of our website.

View the Poverty Tour documentary, "Truth and Hope: The Challenge to Address Poverty in Our Communities," produced by Cash Michaels, to learn more about the Poverty Tour's travels - over 2,000 miles and to 27 communities in North Carolina since it began in January.

Mission

The UNC Center for Poverty, Work and Opportunity is a non-partisan, interdisciplinary institute designed to study, examine, document, and advocate for proposals, policies and services to mitigate poverty in North Carolina and the nation.

The Center has four goals:

1. To address the pressing needs of those currently living at or below the poverty level in North Carolina
2. To provide an interdisciplinary forum to examine innovative and practical ideas to move more men, women and children out of poverty
3. To raise public awareness of issues related to work and poverty
4. To train a new generation to combat the causes and effects of poverty and to improve the circumstances of working people