After more than 20 years of forging pathways from poverty, Colorado Center on Law and Policy recently embarked on a new strategic plan that requires us to ask difficult questions of ourselves and each other.

Building on our strong reputation as an effective advocacy organization, we are seeking to reevaluate and enhance our approach, and fuel strategic transformation by placing a commitment to equity at the forefront of our work. CCLP will also be daring in our commitment to end poverty through evidence-based legal and legislative advocacy.

I am pleased to report that during months of dedication, brainstorming and re-imagining, the staff and board stayed the course to create newly enhanced vision, mission and values statements.  I am proud of this outcome, and perhaps more importantly, I am proud of how the process created greater commitments to each other, our partners and the communities we serve.

Foremost in our mission and vision, CCLP recognizes that historical and structural discrimination has perpetuated poverty particularly for communities of color. We will help to break down those systemic practices and policies. In so doing, CCLP will seek to advance equity for all Coloradans experiencing poverty, including rural Coloradans. We will work to secure access to sufficient food, health, housing and income for all Coloradans. CCLP will continue its short-term focus on defending and expanding public programs while also realizing our long-term vision to end poverty.

Thanks to the support of The Colorado Trust, the Colorado Health Foundation, the Denver Foundation, Rose Community Foundation, and many of our other funders, we are focusing on community engagement as an essential component of our work to shift dynamics and share power. We will collaborate with partners to ensure that those with lived experiences can lead with us as we develop legislative and legal solutions to the challenges facing their communities.

Additionally, our commitment to non-partisanship and to monitor and raise the voice of communities with state agencies, such as the Colorado Offices of the Governor and Attorney General, the Colorado Departments of Health Care Policy and Financing, Public Health and Environment, and Human Services, will continue and grow stronger.

Those of you who know CCLP’s staff understand that they dig deep and are unafraid to find the answers and propose solutions. Our evidence-based approach means that we take our responsibility to the community seriously. Whether we are engaging in legislative or legal advocacy, our work will continue to be rooted in research and analysis. Because of a generous gift from Donald W. and Lynn K. Burnes late last year, we launched the Burnes Institute for Poverty Research at CCLP to build upon our research and analysis work.

The COVID-19 outbreak has underscored the importance of public programs that preserve our humanity. When Colorado closed for business to contain the outbreak, unemployment supports, access to health care, access to food, and housing security became widely understood as basic human needs that society must be able to provide. This pandemic has demonstrated that CCLP’s work is more relevant now than ever before, and has exposed the true economic fragility of life for most Coloradans, more than half of whom have always been less that a missed paycheck away from being unable to meet basic needs.

You have stood with CCLP in the past, enabling us to stand with diverse communities throughout Colorado in the fight against poverty. Your support continues to make our work possible today. We count on you and look forward to sharing more about our work and strategies for the future. If you are newly familiar with CCLP’s important work and want to join our movement, learn how to support us.

In addition to our new mission, vision and values statements, CCLP will unveil a new brand in the summer of 2020. Look for announcements regarding our anti-poverty agenda in the weeks and months to come.

-By Tiffani Lennon, J.D., LL.M