01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, June 20, 2006

BY NEIL DOWNING
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Community groups plan to use a TV documentary as a springboard for a new campaign to help the working poor in Rhode Island.

The documentary, Waging a Living, is said to portray the dreams, frustrations and accomplishments of four low-wage earners in the country who struggle to live from paycheck to paycheck.

The 90-minute show, filmed over three years, is to be broadcast on public television in the fall; Rhode Island PBS (WSBE-TV, Channel 36) plans to show it Sept. 7, said the station's program director, Kathryn Larsen.

A number of community groups in Rhode Island plan to use the show as a way to highlight the plight of the working poor here, said Sally Turner, communications director of Making Connections Providence, a program of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

(The Casey foundation, based in Baltimore, bills itself as the world's largest philanthropy dedicated to improving the lives of disadvantaged children.)

Organizers are still putting together the local campaign, titled "Building Strong Families." But Turner and Larsen provided some of the details yesterday after an event held at the John Hope Settlement House in the city's West End.

For example, the campaign is to include the following elements:

Channel 36 will broadcast a one-hour "town hall" forum after the documentary airs, focusing on predatory lending and other issues affecting the working poor, Larsen said. (Predatory lending refers to lending practices that gouge borrowers, particularly those with low incomes.)

The campaign will serve as host for three community forums in Providence, highlighting segments of the documentary and exploring related issues.

The campaign will launch an education effort that will incorporate the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's "Money Smart" program, said John Symynkywicz, director of development at the John Hope Settlement House, a neighborhood-based community center located off Westminster Street. ("Money Smart" is, in essence, a financial literacy program, intended to help teach money skills -- including banking relationships -- to people outside the financial mainstream.)

The campaign may also serve as host of a regional education workshop, focusing on such topics as housing and lending, Turner said.

The campaign plans a number of community-based "how-to" seminars and workshops that will focus on building financial assets and other topics, Turner said.

The new campaign will start in September and continue at least until January, and perhaps until spring, Larsen and Turner said.

Overall, the campaign is intended "to work with low-income families, to increase their income, their savings and their assets to create stronger families," Turner said.

It is also intended to let the working poor know about the various resources that are available to help them, "to get them off the unending poverty cycle," Larsen said.

Part of the campaign's focus will be to further raise awareness of the federal earned income credit, Turner said.

(Although administered through the Internal Revenue Service, the credit serves as the nation's single largest antipoverty program. In general, funds are distributed through the federal income-tax system to the working poor who meet certain eligibility rules.)

Rhode Island PBS is one of about a dozen local public television stations nationwide that have received grants from the Annie E. Casey Foundation to build local campaigns around the documentary, Larsen said.

The Rhode Island grant, of about $12,000, will help Channel 36 distribute printed materials and take other steps to develop and implement the campaign, to "get the information out there," Larsen said.

In addition, three of the campaign's leaders -- Rhode Island PBS, Making Connections Providence and the John Hope Settlement House -- are organizing community groups to pool their resources for the campaign, providing local experts, professionals and representatives of service agencies, Turner and Larsen said.

More information about the documentary is available at this PBS Web site:

www.pbs.org/pov/wagingaliving

More information about the Annie E. Casey Foundation is on this Web site:

www.aecf.org

ndowning@projo.com / (401) 277-7640