2013 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699 Zack Hamlett, Director

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What is a Community Action Agency

Community Action Agencies (CAAs) help the poor in the areas of self-sufficiency, employment, housing, education, nutrition, emergency assistance, information and referral and income management. More than half of the nation's Head Start programs are administered by CAAs, and most CAAs provide Weatherization and Rental Assistance Programs and a range of other programs. For the millions of Americans with income below the poverty line who do not receive welfare benefits (the working poor, intact families, childless adults and others), CAAs are the chief source of assistance. They serve a vital role as mobilizers of resources for the poor at the local level.

History of Community Action Agencies
Community Action was the cornerstone of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, embodying the fundamental idea that the poor know best what their problems are and how best to allocate resources to correct them. Hence the requirement for "maximum feasible participation" of the poor in the direction and work of Community Action Agencies, which is the basis for the requirement that at least one-third of the board of directors of Community Action Agencies be representatives of the poor, while one third must be public officials (or their representatives), with the remaining members representing the broader community, including business, the clergy, labor, education and other stakeholders.

Originally, CAAs were given "local initiative" funds to support locally designed and administered programs to combat poverty in their communities. As the years went by, the local initiative programs became more entrenched and the local CAAs had less "free" money with which to start new programs; but at the same time other program funds became available, not only through Title II of the Economic Opportunity Act, but through other federal and State agencies and Departments as well. By 1970 there were some 1,200 CAAs nationwide, serving areas in which 90 percent of the nation's poor resided. During the Seventies the number of CAAs nationally leveled off at about 1,000 as a result of consolidation of a number of small rural single-county CAAs into larger multi-county agencies; but the coverage actually increased to 95 percent of the nation's counties. The Economic Opportunity Act, and with it the Community Services Administration, expired on September 30, 1981; but Community Action lives on under the Community Services Block Grant Program (CSBG) administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Community Services. On average, 7 percent of CAA funding comes from the CSBG; 93 percent comes from other federal, state, local, and private sources.

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