Welcome to Peninsula Poverty Response

Peninsula Poverty Response (PPR) is a non-profit on the Long Beach Peninsula with a mission to reduce the consequences related to poverty through advocacy, awareness and action. PPR started 6 years ago with a group of people meeting at a local coffee shop, the individuals noticed a need in our community they set some goals, such as creating the Pacific County Resource Guide, planning the counties first Project Community Connect, creating awareness campaigns to help our community recognize poverty on the peninsula

As an organization it is our mission to reduce the consequences related to poverty. A majority portion of our work will always be spent working with and serving our community members experiencing poverty. As we explore the next 5 years, we will serve individuals experiencing poverty by continuing our most effective outreach programs and develop new programs and events that work to improve the health of our community. This section details our current outreach programs, events we currently coordinate or plan to implement in the next 5 years.

Project Community Connect– Formally known as Project Homeless Connect. This is an annual event that occurs in January in coordination with the Point-In-Time Count. This event brings service providers, and community support groups together in one place. Community members experiencing poverty are invited to this event to access legal services, housing services, ID replacement, flu shots, warm clothing, a haircut, a hot meal and more. As the program continues over the next 5 years, we plan to make this event accessible to more residents of the county by providing transportation to and from the event, expanding resources/providers and learning from our attendees.

Student Resource Fair- Like Project Community Connect this event is an annual event, where providers and services are in one place. This events target audience is for students in our community and is a partnership with the Pack2School event and carnival. Pack2School is a school supply event where families and students are invited to celebrate the new school year, pick up school supplies and backpacks for the kids. In a community where 1 in 3 kids are experiencing homelessness, we saw a need to resource our families/students, our role in this event is to coordinate the providers and provide hygiene supplies for the students. We will continue to work with Pack2School to reduce some of the consequences related to growing up in poverty.

Buddy Program- While the name might change, this program is outreach focused. The program will be volunteer run, we will place volunteers at the food banks, laundry mats and locations that our community members experiencing poverty access. Our volunteers will be trained in community resources and act as liaisons between services. This will be year-round outreach based on the number of volunteers and availability, but the minimum goal will be weekly outreach.

Poverty Training– As a part of PPR’s role in the community of the Long Beach Peninsula, we seek to provide educational opportunities, spread awareness of poverty in our community and how a community can be action and solution based. We are committed to community education such as poverty simulations and community forums. PPR has hosted a Poverty Simulation where guests are invited to take part in a simulation where they gain an understanding of what life could be for an individual experiencing poverty. Guests are given a description of their daily life in the community, such as individual, parent, student, or other family member. The attendees receive instructions to navigate a month’s budget with minimal funds. This event brings increased awareness to our community. PPR hopes to continue this education through future Poverty Simulations as a way to continue the conversation with our community, PPR seeks to engage in public spaces to develop our understanding of community needs. We do this by hosting yearly community forums.

Hand in Hand Newsletter “Hand in Hand Newsletter” a newsletter where we communicate with the PPR volunteer base, members of other groups and share how people can get involved.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us at pprinfo.wa@gmail.com.