Reinvesting in America : the grassroots movements that are feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and putting Americans back to work /

Garr, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Louisville journalist, signed on with World Hunger Year, the nonprofit group formed in 1975 by the late Harry Chapin and ex-priest and radio talk-show host Bill Ayres, to build a database on nonprofit groups around the country whose efforts to fight hunger and poverty suggest creative new solutions. Four years and 200,000 miles later, he describes the best of these programs and urges citizens and politicians to expand their successes across the nation. Like the programs he profiles, Garr's chapters focus on people's needs--for food, shelter, housing, education, healthy children and families, political power, job skills, and work. Effective programs convince Garr that dealing with U.S. poverty requires effective government-grassroots partnerships. Other requirements include management by clearly defined objectives, flexible and daring leadership, and commitment to the simple truth that change is better than charity. A heartening alternative to the endless, misdirected debate over welfare rather than poverty. An appendix supplies addresses and phone numbers of 185 groups around the nation, including all those Garr discusses. --Mary Carroll

After winning a Pulitzer Prize with the Louisville Courier-Journal, Garr joined the nonprofit advocacy group World Hunger Year in 1989 and undertook an examination of grassroots organizations devoted to helping the poor become self-reliant. After visiting more than 200 cities, towns and villages in all 50 states and more than 500 projects, he details programs to assist Americans in securing food, shelter, decent housing, health care, political power, jobs skills and employment. The most effective agencies, he concludes, are multipurpose organizations that seek to identify and deal with problems using a one-on-one approach involving the people they serve as planners, builders and board members. The aim here is to help the down-and-out get back on their feet. This upbeat volume has a message for individuals, groups, elected officials and government agencies and may inspire many of us to emulate the organizations studied here. An appendix titled ``Getting Involved'' lists more than 180 grassroots groups by state for readers stirred to action. Author tour. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved