The Greater Manchester Poverty Action is an organisation that focuses on settling poverty in Greater Manchester with emphasis on supporting measures that prevent and reduce in the city and surrounding region.
GM Poverty Action additionally provides networks support which equips stakeholders in Greater Manchester with knowledge skills and expertise they need to tackle poverty and to maximise the impact of efforts to deal with the underlying causes of poverty, providing newsletters about policy development that highlight good practice and shares information concerning the poverty levels which is used to support stakeholders’ work.
This is accomplished through policy and research work, referrals, and signposting such as programme work that creates practical responses to poverty. The organisation is currently running a programme in Tameside and Oldham that assists people in accessing support that better meets their needs to help reduce the use of food banks.
Prior to the pandemic, in-person events were organised to launch new policy reports and publicise findings to stakeholders such as the local council, voluntary community sectors and the private sector but during the pandemic holding such meetings have been held virtually, other activities include group meetings regarding a particular issue.
Greater Manchester Poverty Action are currently focusing on resolving the issue of poverty locally using a three-year strategy to deliver innovative responses policies and ensure that there are anti-poverty strategies in place with partners as central government policy is working as a barrier because the universal credit is not generous, and the economy does not function in a way that offers good quality jobs to people.
Chief Executive Officer Graham Whitham said, “national policies is working against efforts to target poverty particularly poverty amongst certain groups of the populations, poverty amongst single parent families is going back up again, poverty amongst families with more than two children is really going up a lot again, poverty amongst households where there is a disabled person whether it’s an adult or a child is really going back up again.” Sharing further concern about the proportion of low paying jobs that are available especially because the nation is considered to be a wealthy one, explaining how critical the issue of poverty in Greater Manchester is.
Whitham worked with Save the Children and Oxfam before he set up Greater Manchester Poverty Action and was passionate about bringing that previous experience and knowledge from those roles to a local level in Greater Manchester. Graham Whitham hopes that the government in Westminster will change and that they will adopt an anti-poverty agenda nationally which will compliment the work of the organisation.
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