Welcome!

Welcome to Family Independence Initiative- FII-National! We hope you like our new look.

Please click play to view the video clip from the San Francisco Invest in Family Initiative pilot project launch event on May 2007 at San Francisco City Hall hosted by the Mayor’s Office of Community Development (MOCD) and Family Independence Initiative (FII).

The Family Independence Initiative

The Family Independence Initiative, FII, has developed an approach that shifts the responsibility and resources for improving the lives of low-income families back to the families and their own natural community of friends. FII provides low-income families with small monetary awards and access to opportunities based, not on need, but on the documentation of positive changes that families make for themselves and in helping others.

This approach has been tried in Oakland California, Hawaii and a new pilot is just starting in San Francisco. The project only works with self selected peer group of families from communities that are not making progress to self sufficiency. FII gives the families a choice of our paying a professional case manager to give them counseling and direction OR making some of the money normally spent on professionals available in monetary awards directly to the families if they work together and take documentable steps to improve their lives. In all cases the families opt to work together and find their own solutions. Families all get computers and report progress online. Upon verification of the reported progress, families receive quarterly award checks.

Some of the indicators of success for the completed Oakland and Hawaii pilots:

The San Francisco pilot began last year with 86 individual in 16 households. One peer group is primarily Samoan, one African American and one Hispanic, mimicking the diversity of previous pilots. The initial data on the progress of these families is extremely encouraging. In addition to the progress of the enrolled families, the San Francisco pilot is tracking whether the success of the core families ultimately creates a positive ripple effect in the broader community. It is this ripple effect which holds the greatest promise for impacting poverty at a large scale.