3 minute read
Empowering Individuals to Impact the Community
Robin Rohrbaugh | President & CEO, Community Progress Council | YCEA Board of Directors
BY JJ SHEFFER | DIRECTOR, COMMUNITY PROGRAMS
Robin Rohrbaugh looks at all the challenges and barriers of poverty and sees an opportunity to think holistically about addressing them in order to help people move toward self-sufficiency. As the President and CEO of Community Progress Council (CPC), Rohrbaugh is quick to point out that the organization’s mission statement doesn’t talk about poverty. “Our mission is to empower individuals and families to move toward self-sufficiency and advocate for change to promote community growth,” she says.
There are about 45,000 people in York County living below the poverty line, and another 150,000 who live below the self-sufficiency level – struggling to pay their bills on a month-to-month basis without some form of public or private assistance, Rohrbaugh states. CPC’s approach to addressing this is to provide comprehensive, innovative services, directed by the individuals’ needs.
- Robin Rohrbaugh | President and CEO, CPC
Rohrbaugh, who previously ran what was then known as the Healthy York County Coalition, will soon celebrate 10 years as head of CPC.
“This position is the purest form of social work that I’ve ever been involved in,” she says, “because it really looks holistically at the comprehensive needs of a person and a family in the context of their community.”
CPC redesigned their service delivery to be people-centered, transforming everything from data collection to communications between departments, training, management, and accounting. These changes have allowed them to meet people’s immediate needs and then build a plan and support system to put them on a path to self-sufficiency and independence. Under Rohrbaugh’s leadership, CPC serves all of York County, with nearly 30 locations.
The organization has an immediate economic impact in the community, but they’re also playing the long game for sustainable, systemic change. Serving 9,000 people annually through WIC and 650 children between Head Start and Early Head Start, CPC is the largest provider of services to low-income children under the age of five.
Rohrbaugh says that when CPC invests in a single mother and their child, for example, working with them for years to achieve self-sufficiency, the biggest impact on York’s economy is the opportunity to interrupt generational poverty. “That child, then…will have the experiences around education and employment, the role modeling and experiences that will prevent them from ever having to live in a similar situation to what they lived in as a child. Their children will not grow up in poverty,” she says. “We have the incredible opportunity to impact people’s lives and the economy of York County.”
226 E. College Ave York, PA 17403 | yorkcpc.org | 717.846.4600
