Hello.

Yesterday a group of people from a growing coalition came together and formed the Dane County Coalition to Fight Homelessness and End Poverty. We decided our mission statement would be as follows: A coalition of people and organizations committed to speak out and take action against the dehumanizing effects of poverty. We decided that we would work on campaigns that are related to our mission and timely. We will work on short term, focused goals that we can accomplish.

Our first goal area, and we will choose more, will be homelessness. We are working on several areas including a public education campaign, budget advocacy, media advocacy, legislative action and mobilizing communities.

Our first event will be on June 5th from 5:00 - 8:00 at the First United Methodist Church (203 Wisconsin Avenue) where we will have some informational speakers followed by a roundtable discussion.

The speakers we have lined up at the moment are:

• Ralph Middlecamp (St. Vincent de Paul) will talk about the history of homelessness in Dane County.
• Steve Schooler (Porchlight) will talk about the affordable housing issues in Dane County and single homeless men.
• Rachel Krinsky (Interfaith Hospitality Network) will talk about homeless families
• Gayle Ihlenfeld (YWCA) will talk about the Dane County Homeless Consortium Plan to End Homelessness
• Operation Welcome Home members will talk about what they see as the solutions to homelessness.

We'll then take a short break and have a roundtable discussion with experts who have a discussion that is responsive to issues raised by the audience and talk about current issues in the community.

For a coalition that is now about 26 hours old, that's alot to have accomplished. And there is more to come. Stay tuned.