Their Four-Stage Model Moves Families From Generational Poverty to Financial Self-Sufficiency
“If we believe in the American Dream, we want to live in a country where everyone has opportunity and access to the summit.” — Jason Janz
DENVER, CO, UNITED STATES, September 2, 2026
Two authors on a mission to help communities eradicate poverty in the United States have launched a new website that echoes the message and lessons they share in their upcoming book “Together We Climb: A Community-Driven Approach to Break the Cycle of Poverty and Build Prosperity.”
The “Together We Climb” website (togetherweclimb.org) explains Dr. Steven C. Taylor and Jason Janz’s framework for attacking poverty, shares real-life stories of people who have been helped, and includes ways others can assist with the cause.
“Together We Climb” uses the metaphor of scaling a mountain to illustrate someone moving from generational poverty to generational wealth. Taylor and Janz’s approach involves a four-stage framework:
- Essential Needs: Provides the foundation — housing, basic needs, and support — that keeps a single crisis from derailing progress.
- Education: Helps people acquire the credentials, skills, and aptitudes necessary to earn a living wage.
- Employment: Connects them to quality jobs that offer stable hours, benefits, fair wages, and a culture of advancement.
- Economic Empowerment” Transitions them from earning income to building wealth — buying a home, starting a business, saving for retirement, and gaining the agency to shape their own future.
Taylor and Janz say the final step is especially important.
“Some families have lived multiple generations in poverty, where nobody in the family has had access to go to college, and nobody’s had access to own a home,” Janz says. “If we believe in the American Dream, we want to live in a country where everyone has opportunity and access to the summit.”
Taylor says that for too long, poverty has been treated as something to manage rather than something to end — a maze of disconnected public benefits and an education system that measures success by enrollment instead of outcomes. He and Janz take a different approach.
“The current system is failing and families struggle from one year to the next because of it,” Taylor says. “Instead, we need new education experiences that connect people directly to real pathways in the labor market, while ensuring public benefits support that progress rather than stand in its way. People should have the opportunity to build skills, savings, homeownership, and greater financial independence for their future.”
Both Taylor and Janz have expertise related to the topic. Taylor was the first in his family to graduate from college, later served as a college administrator, and became a national policy expert on postsecondary and workforce development, earning appointments to Virginia’s State Council of Higher Education and a U.S. Department of Education advisory committee.
Janz, a first-generation college graduate who grew up in poverty, is a pastor whose faith led him to found CrossPurpose, a Denver nonprofit that has become a national model for helping adults move from generational poverty to financial self-sufficiency. CrossPurpose has trained more than 1,200 Denver residents for full-time careers and received $1.86 million in state funding last year alone for pre-apprenticeship and certification programs.
Taylor and Janz are confident the country can eradicate poverty, but say doing so will require a fundamental shift in how we understand poverty and how we approach people trying to climb out of it.
“We need to challenge our own assumptions about what poverty looks like, how people end up there, and why so many stay stuck,” Janz says. “Solving it will take a generation of policymakers, educators and community leaders building an alternative approach where we walk with people long enough to watch them go from merely surviving to building a future.”
About Jason Janz
Jason Janz, co-author of “Together We Climb: A Community-Driven Approach to Break the Cycle of Poverty and Build Prosperity,” is CEO and co-founder of CrossPurpose, a Denver-based nonprofit that helps families journey from poverty to prosperity. A first-generation college graduate, Janz holds a master’s degree in theology and is driven by his faith to spend his life serving others. He and his wife, Jen, have made Northeast Denver their home for the last two decades in what they believe is Colorado’s greatest neighborhood.
About Dr. Steven C. Taylor
Dr. Steven C. Taylor, co-author of “Together We Climb: A Community-Driven Approach to Break the Cycle of Poverty and Build Prosperity,” has more than two decades of experience reforming postsecondary education and workforce development to empower people to build their skills and pursue meaningful careers. He founded ED2WORK in 2019, working with states, companies, and nonprofits to strengthen education and skills pathways for adult and working learners. He earned his doctorate in business from Wilmington University and bachelor’s and master’s degrees from East Texas A&M University.
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