Giving Compass' Take:

• Whole Child Strategies is a Memphis-based nonprofit that is trying to tackle poverty by providing comprehensive community development programs, gatherings, and advocacy groups. 

• How can community development initiatives and collective impact strategies successfully address poverty? 

• Read about the connections between community development and youth development. 

In a "big small town" like Memphis, neighborhoods are a source of pride and strength for residents in one of the poorest cities in America.

Now, a new Memphis nonprofit organization is seeking to address poverty by coordinating the work of neighborhood schools, businesses, churches, and community groups.

Natalie McKinney is executive director of Whole Child Strategies, created last fall to help neighborhood and community leaders chart their own paths for decreasing poverty, which also would increase student achievement.

"There's a lot of people 'collaborating' but not a lot of coordination toward a shared goal," said McKinney, a former policy director for Shelby County Schools.

McKinney doesn’t want to "reinvent the wheel" on community development. However, she does want to provide logistical resources for analyzing data, facilitating meetings, and coordinating public advocacy for impoverished Memphis neighborhoods through existing or emerging neighborhood councils.

"Poverty looks different in different areas," she said, citing varying levels of parent education, transportation, jobs and wages, and access to mental health services. "When we get down and figure out what is really going on and really dealing with the root cause for that particular community, that’s the work that the neighborhood council is doing."

Read the full article about the fight against poverty in Memphis by Laura Faith Kebede at Chalkbeat.