WHAT IS RMAPI? The Rochester-Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative (RMAPI) is a multi-sector community collaborative with a goal to improve quality of life by reducing poverty and increasing self-sufficiency. To do this, RMAPI is focused on increasing income, making basic needs more affordable and accessible, and lowering concentrations of poverty. ABOUT US We have set out to fight poverty in a meaningful way. Pervasive, long-standing, deeply rooted poverty is the greatest crisis the Rochester area has ever faced. Without a new approach, it will continue to get worse. Through the dedicated work of partners across our community, we have created that new approach – one that focuses on creating system-wide changes to create long-term improvements and reduce poverty. RMAPI Focus Areas Both of these audiences have multiple needs, but RMAPI’s work is focused in two critical areas that provide some of the greatest opportunity for poverty reduction: By focusing on the accessibility and affordability of Basic Needs, we will help these two audiences avoid the tyranny and repeated trauma of a focus on survival – necessary to even consider the higher-level activities required to exit poverty, and stay out of it. And by focusing on Workforce Development, we will help both of these audiences prepare for, find and keep jobs with family-supporting wages. How We Get There When we focus our effort on these audiences and these needs, we can organize RMAPI partners around the achievement of three high-level outcomes: Increased income, through better jobs and access to critical supports Increased accessibility and affordability of basic needs, through more affordable housing, better coordination of services and more effective utilization of benefits Decreased concentration of poverty, through strengthened communities, home to self-sufficient families These outcomes are being pursued aggressively, in dozens of ways, by RMAPI partners.