Grassroots Action

One of the Justice Center’s four strategies for attacking poverty in North Carolina is “Grassroots Empowerment and Community Capacity Building.” Working collaboratively with community-based activists, the Center develops and implements initiatives that are designed to enable low-income persons and community based organizations to take the lead in solving the problems that they face.

In these initiatives, the Center works to increase the social, economic and political power of its constituents by providing training, access to resources and other tools to build their capacity to organize and become their own advocate.,

Specific projects include:

• Conducting community education events, forums and workshops
• Publishing fact sheets and newsletters
• Initiating and participating in economic justice campaigns
• Building alliances with other social change organizations

As a part of its grassroots initiative, the Justice Center has developed a new statewide network of parents and education activists dedicated to promoting education policy reforms at the state level, NC Community Advocates for Revitalizing Education (NCCARE). NCCARE is made up of parents, educators and community leaders, and it has two primary goals.

1.  To reform our current system of school finance to make sure every district has adequate and equitable funding.
2.  To eliminate the achievement gap.

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