The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) in Washington, D.C., has announced the launch of an economic equity initiative in Mississippi and North Carolina to improve the well-being of people living in poverty.

With assistance from Community Impact and Investment at Capital One, the Building Equitable Economic Supports in the South (BEES) program will partner with local community and policy organizations. In Mississippi, CLASP will partner with Springboard to Opportunities and the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative to help improve access to affordable child care, with an emphasis on supporting Black mothers and Black childcare providers. The partner organizations will also examine ways to enable more families to access cash assistance through the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

In North Carolina, CLASP will partner with Blueprint NC and the NC Budget & Tax Center, with support from the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust in Winston-Salem. BEES initiatives will focus on improving access to Medicaid through reducing and eliminating barriers identified by people with lived experience.

“CLASP firmly believes rooting our public benefit access work in southern states is necessary to address systemic racism in public benefits and advance racial equity,” said CLASP senior policy analyst Suzanne Wikle in a blog post. “We also firmly believe this work must be done in authentic partnership and with leadership from people and communities that are eligible for public benefit programs. The BEES project encompasses these two beliefs and has the potential to achieve the ultimate goal of making public benefit programs more accessible and more equitable in the target states.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/JacobLund)