Giving Compass' Take:

• Dallas News reports that the city of Dallas is working to build a coalition of key players to fight poverty that is all too common in the city. 

• How can other cities learn from this example? What is your community already doing to address inter-generational poverty? 

• Learn how philanthropists can make an impact on wealth inequality. 

Sometimes a problem is so deeply ingrained in a city and the stakes so high for improvement that a bold innovative approach is required to tackle it.

Such is the case for Dallas’ decades-long battle with the complex conundrum of generational poverty. How could a city with so much economic success have the third highest child poverty rate in the country? One in three children in Dallas grow up poor. It’s a shame and a struggle.

But now, Mayor Mike Rawlings and the city of Dallas are pushing a promising idea that could help us not only understand this problem but give us tangible, effective programs to combat it. A new independent nonprofit, Child Poverty Action Lab, (CPAL) has been created to leverage collective resources to try to break the cycle - trying solutions that haven’t been tried before.

Under the new nonprofit, for the  first time, CEOs of the city’s major public institutions - including city manager T.C. Broadnax, Dallas Police Chief Renee Hall, Dallas ISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa and Parkland’s Fred Cerise - have been meeting regularly asan advisory group to come up with unified strategies on combating the causes and effects of child poverty.

Astoundingly, though they individually control all kinds of areas that determine a city’s success including housing, education and jobs, local government officials have not before collaborated on workable solutions at this level, Rawlings said. We might be onto creating a national model.

Read the full article about Dallas' plan to fight poverty at Dallas News.