Coalition on Human Needs Policy Priorities
1 January 2007The Coalition on Human Needs (CHN) is an important and influential national alliance of more than 100 organizations working together to promote public policies that address the needs of low-income people and other vulnerable populations. Members of the Coalition include civil rights, religious, labor and professional organizations and those concerned with the well being of children, women, the elderly, immigrants and people with disabilities.
The mission of the Coalition on Human Needs (CHN) is to build a national community that embraces the American values of opportunity and compassion, with particular attention paid to the needs of the most deeply poor. Consequently, in light of both its mission and its national stature and influence, it is an important event when CHN releases a major public policy statement.
On December 14, 2006, the Coalition Board of Directors adopted public policy priorities for the Coalition. The Board has divided priorities into two categories. The first category consists of three issue areas for which CHN staff will play a leadership role in advocating on Capital Hill and engaging the CHN network to do advocacy. The three leadership issue areas are: ensuring a federal budget that provides adequate resources to address critical human needs; promoting a responsible and equitable tax system that brings in sufficient revenues to meet human needs; and increasing the minimum wage and indexing it to keep workers from falling further behind. These three areas were identified as top priorities in a survey of CHN’s network conducted in November.
The second category consists of issues where CHN will play a supportive role to other organizations and expand their advocacy capacity. These issues are ones relating to efforts to strengthen the safety net and expand access to federal programs for low-income people.
Criteria for categorizing issues include: timeliness of the issue, the breadth of interest in the issue among members, whether sufficient leadership is already being provided on the issue by member organizations or other organizations, the expertise of CHN staff and member organizations on the issue, and the extent to which the Coalition could affect a related public policy outcome.
A complete copy of Public Policy Priorities Calendar Year 2007 is available online.
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