Industrial Areas Foundation

rdf:langString Industrial Areas Foundation

rdf:langString Industrial Areas Foundation

rdf:langString Industrial Areas Foundation

rdf:langString Kathryn Lewis

rdf:langString Bishop Sheil Lewis,

rdf:langString Marshal Field,

rdf:langString Saul David Alinsky,

rdf:langString Ernest Cortes Jr.

rdf:langString Georgianna Gleason

rdf:langString Michael Gecan

rdf:langString File:IAF-600-x-125.png

rdf:langString To build organizations whose primary purpose is power—the ability to act—and whose chief product is social change; to practice what the founding fathers preached: the ongoing attempt to make life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness everyday realities for more and more Americans.

rdf:langString The Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) is a national community organizing network established in 1940 by Saul Alinsky, Roman Catholic Bishop Bernard James Sheil and businessman and founder of the Chicago Sun-Times Marshall Field III. The IAF partners with religious congregations and civic organizations at the local level to help them build organizations of organizations, referred to as broad-based organizations by the Industrial Areas Foundation, with the purpose of strengthening citizen leadership, developing trust across a community's dividing lines and taking action on issues identified by local community leaders. The Industrial Areas Foundation consists of 65 affiliates in the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia, with the US projects organized into two regions, West / Southwest IAF and Metro IAF. IAF provides training, consultation and organizers for its affiliated organizations. The Industrial Areas Foundation does not provide direct services, but through its organizing has created notable entities for workforce development (Project QUEST, Capital IDEA, Project IOWA, VIDA, ARRIBA, NOVA, Skills Quest, Capital IDEA - Houston, AZ Career Pathways and JobPath), healthcare (Common Ground Healthcare), and housing development for working- and middle-class families (Nehemiah Project in East Brooklyn and The Road Home Program in New Orleans). In 1994, the IAF organization in Baltimore designed and passed the first living wage bill in the US, and since then IAF organizations across the country have won changes including municipal living wage policies for public sector workers and living wage requirements for tax abatements or economic incentives, that have raised the wages of millions of workers.