POWER represents over 50 unique congregations in Southeastern and Central Pennsylvania. With four Regional Chapters, we are people of faith committed to the work of bringing about justice here and now. We believe that faith can bring us together more than it can divide us and that our varied faith traditions call on us to act to make our communities and our nation better places to live. POWER is a member of the Faith in Action National Network. We organize toward a new society based on equity, sustainability, and love. We are strong, multi-racial, people-centered organizations that relentlessly press for social change. We are also members of PowerSwitch Action (formerly known as The Partnership for Working Families), a national network of 21 powerful grassroots organizations with strategic alliances amongst labor, housing, racial justice, faith leaders, environmental organizations and others. POWER uses our belief in God’s goodness and compassion for the suffering to organize and empower the people of Philadelphia, Southeastern, and Central Pennsylvania to live and work together so that God’s presence is known on every block, that people work together to transform the conditions of their neighborhood, and that life flourishes for all.

Shining a light on broken systems:

POWER has come together to lift up a new prophetic voice and bear witness to the fact that these systems no longer work for too many families in too many neighborhoods. Systems that allow for 30% unemployment in some of our communities, particularly our communities of color; wherein nearly 50% of our children can’t read or perform math, or graduate on time, and that appear to continually be in crisis; systems that allow one of our brothers or sisters to be murdered nearly every day; systems that allow more than 100,000 city residents to go without health insurance, and that allow a tenth of our properties to lie vacant or abandoned or foreclosed – these are broken systems. And while this brokenness hurts all Pennsylvanians, POWER recognizes and seeks to address the fact that it is the poor, communities of color and working families of all kinds who suffer the brunt of declining opportunities and dysfunctional systems. POWER commits to call attention to this brokenness, to advance concrete policy changes to reform these systems and to work with public and private sector leaders to bring the necessary resources to bear to turn these systems, and our city, around.