We are excited about the progress that our Team Leaders are making.  We started this journey on October 23rd, 2012 and have been working for nine months. 

     
Posted
AuthorJon Kopp

By Jason Janz

Upstream Impact began in 2012, but the story goes back a bit farther as two men, Tom Gamel and myself, journeyed together to try and make Denver a better city.  Tom Gamel is a successful businessman who was given back to the Denver community over the past several decades.  I am a pastor and non-profit leader in Northeast Denver.  Tom and I met at the neighborhood elementary school that my children attend and we partnered to try and help out this turnaround school.  Over the last five years, we have partnered to help families in poverty primarily through educational endeavors.  We have a similar burden and belief that every person in our city ought to have the opportunity to purse the American Dream. 

In 2012, I was growing increasingly frustrated at the problem of poverty and how to solve it.  I have a community Bible study in my home on Wednesday evenings and I’ll never forget the night when it all came home to me.  A single mom coming to our study walked in the front door and slammed her purse on the ground in our foyer and said, “I’m so sick of being poor.”  I remember watching this as I was sitting in my living room and I had an internal conversation with myself.  I wanted to help her but how?  Did she just need $20 for her gas tank to get her around for a few days?  Chances are I’d be helping with that need again.  It wouldn’t solve the problem.  Should I pray for her?  Of course, that would make everything better, right? 

So, what did I do?  Nothing.  I just sat there.  Why?  I had no idea how to solve her problem.  How do you get someone out of poverty in America?  I didn’t know. 

A few months later, I met Scott Miller who has implemented a concept called Circles.  Circles is a community approach to ending poverty that encourages middle to wealth class volunteers to partner with people in poverty to help get them out.  We liked the idea and created Upstream Impact.  We hired a staff, looked at best practices of several anti-poverty programs across the US, and started reaching out to the community.

On October 23rd, 2012, we began with our first cohort of 26 brave individuals.  They were picked out of an application pool of over 100 people.  We began this transformational journey every Tuesday night.  We call these individuals “Team Leaders” because they are the ones who assemble their team of support and drive their change.  The team of supporters are called “Allies.”  We recruited a solid team who volunteer every Tuesday evening to support this transformational journey.  Every Team Leader has three Allies – a staff member and two individuals from the community.

Other than that... Our history starts now.  We'd love your help as we create a beautiful history helping hundreds of families in NE Denver.  Feel free to visit us on a Tuesday night for our family meeting.  We’d love to show you that it can be done! 

 

Posted
AuthorJon Kopp