A white paper on Life Skills by Center for the Greater Good.

1. CITIZENS FIRST HOUSING
Life Skills and Entrepreneurship
Written by Ravi Hanumara
www.CenterforGreaterGood.com | contact@centergg.com | 410 East State Street Eagle, ID 83616

2. Life Skills and Entrepreneurship
Center for the Greater Good believes that Life Skills and Entrepreneurship is are essential to
breaking the cycle of poverty. In affordable housing developments, it is not uncommon to find high
levels of unemployment and low levels of education. Very essential skills such as balancing one’s
checkbook are sometimes not in the skillset of a resident. Furthermore, a significant portion of
residents in a community may not be native speakers of the English language. With a firm foundation
of life skills, not only are residents able to take full advantage of the services available for them, but
also have a stable and healthy lifestyle for their whole families.
Entrepreneurship is yet another powerful force that can effectively help a resident break the
cycle of poverty. In most communities with social services available, residents do not fully understand
the process to be an entrepreneur, and also lack the skillset or guidance to become an entrepreneur.
We believe that with the proper programs in place and opportunities created by partnering with
local businesses, entrepreneurship will serve as a powerful tool in enabling residents to have a bright
future.
Life Skills
The effectiveness of services provided depends greatly on the basic life skills that most of us
take for granted. It is typical to see social services go wasted because the residents do not have some
basic skills. For instance, no matter how good a computer literacy class is, it will be worthless to a
resident if she or he cannot read or write.
Using technology, Center for Greater Good will ensure that specific emphasis is made to
provide life skills training to communities through life skills centers. Basic skills such as homework,
balancing personal budgets, tax preparation, fitness, family counseling, parenting, job skills, how
to interview, etc. will be made available for communities so that the residents effectively break the
cycles of poverty.
Entrepreneurship
Center for Greater Good recognizes the research and policy work of the Kauffman Foundation
on the subject of entrepreneurship and the foundation’s efforts to advance education and training
and provide grants. Education prepares one to become an entrepreneur, and the economic system
gives you the opportunity to be one. Entrepreneurship not only breaks the entrepreneur out of the
cycle of poverty, but also enhances job creation, and solves many economic as well as social services
from the bottom up. Leveraging the funds with high benchmarks and the standard to use state of
the art techniques and best practices is key to effective social services. Center for Greater Good will
address the entrepreneurial opportunity and potential through programs at the communities for both
the youth and adult population to inform and educate residents about entrepreneurship to create
jobs that lift residents out of poverty.
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