Honoring a Community Development Lion
Sen. Kennedy meets with an ACCION USA client from Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1999.
It is with heavy hearts that we at ACCION USA heard the news of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s passing.
As a great supporter of ACCION USA, Senator Kennedy will be missed dearly. His commitment to economic justice made him a natural ally to the microenterprise and community development fields. And as he did throughout his 43-year career in the United States Senate, Senator Kennedy put his beliefs into action – and got results. Among his long list of accomplishments, Senator Kennedy:
- Introduced legislation that created the SBA’s Program for Investment in Micro-entrepreneurs (PRIME), which has provided assistance to organizations that help low-income entrepreneurs for nearly ten years
- Fought to keep intact the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program of the Department of Housing and Urban Development
- Consistently pushed for increased funding of the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund, work which appears to be paying huge dividends in the FY2010 budget.
Although Senator Kennedy is no longer with us in body, his advocacy and work on behalf of low-income Americans will endure for decades. And so on this day of mourning, we remember the words of Senator Kennedy’s iconic 1980 speech, in which he vowed that “the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”