Addressing the systemic causes of poverty and working toward policies that meet the basic human needs of low-income Marylanders to better enable them to rise out of and remain out of poverty is at the heart of our public policy efforts. Just under 10% - 1 in 10 - Marylanders lives in poverty. (Poverty USA, 2018)
"Solidarity means much more than engaging in sporadic acts of generosity. It means thinking and acting in terms of community. It means that the lives of all are prior to the appropriation of goods by a few. It also means combatting the structural causes of poverty, inequality, the lack of work, land and housing, the denial of social and labor rights." (Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti, 116)