A handful of Jackson residents returned from Detroit on Thursday, inspired to take action and enthusiastic about reducing area poverty.
"This is to be continued. This is only the beginning," said Tamar Cain, community resource specialist with the Community Action Agency serving Jackson County, after she got off a bus Thursday night in Jackson.
Cain and about 25 Jackson citizens and supporters of the Partnership Park Neighborhood Association and the CAA went to the 2008 Voices for Action Poverty Summit at Detroit's Cobo Center.
State agencies, including the Michigan Department of Human Services and the Michigan Community Action Agency Association, sponsored the summit, attended by about 5,000 people from across the state, to help find practical ways to cut poverty.
About 20 percent of Michigan residents live at or below the poverty line of $21,203 for a family of four.
About 22,000 Jackson County residents were living in poverty last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the Rev. Martin Luther King III, the second child of the late civil rights leader, spoke at the summit, pointing to President-elect Barack Obama as an example of progress, according to a press release.
King advocated not a minimum wage, but a "living wage," and Granholm stressed the importance of giving everyone the opportunity to go to college.
"It is about getting our work force retrained," said Jessie Murray, director of communications at the Community Action Agency, which also serves Lenawee and Hills-dale counties.
Murray and other local residents who attended the summit pointed to education, access to sustainable housing and transportation as key issues in the battle against poverty.
To address some related issues, there were several break-out sessions, during which participants discussed worker training, Michigan's Prison Re-Entry Initiative, healthcare and neighborhood rehabilitation.
During one session, Wanda Beavers of Jackson talked about the success of the Partnership Park Neighborhood Association, according to a state press release.
The association helped Beavers, who has been homeless six times and now owns a cleaning company, buy her own home.
The neighborhood, which has a long history of poverty, is bounded by Francis, Morrell and Blackstone streets, and Washington Avenue, and has been undergoing redevelopment since 2003.
Information William Newman of Jackson gathered at the summit, energized him to do more.
"We got the ball up and running, we got to keep it going," said Newman, who lives in poverty, but is now doing volunteer work and earning his GED in an attempt to give his three children a better future.
"I want to give them chances to be better off than daddy ever has been," he said. "I am looking upward. I ain't looking downward. I am looking forward."