• CPAL in the news

Here's how Dallas leaders plan to deal with the third-worst child poverty rate among major U.S. cities

The Dallas Morning News - by Corbett Smith - November 2018

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Mayor Mike Rawlings unveiled a new nonprofit, the Child Poverty Action Lab, aimed at addressing the problem of childhood poverty. Nearly one in three children live in poverty in Dallas.

Nearly one in three Dallas children — more than 115,000 kids — grow up in poverty. But some of the city's biggest public and private organizations want to cut that number in half within the next two decades.

During a meeting of his Task Force on Poverty on Tuesday, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings unveiled a new nonprofit, the Child Poverty Action Lab, created solely to address that issue.

The effort, born in part from the task force and Rawlings’ GrowSouth initiative, will take a similar approach to other collaborations pushed by the mayor in recent years to address homelessness, education issues and other problems. CPAL aims to combine the clout of leaders and CEOs from nine of the city’s major institutions and systems — including the City of Dallas, Dallas ISD, Parkland Health and Hospital System, and Dallas Area Rapid Transit — with various other partners working on different aspects of poverty across Dallas.

The new nonprofit hopes to gather these efforts so the groups can share data and guidance, and amplify the most successful projects that address childhood poverty’s causes and effects.

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