Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley Executive Director Alan Jennings set forth new projects and goals Oct. 2 when speaking at the annual meeting of the CACLV.

He announced that the community action organization is selling its warehouse on Elmo Street, which houses the Second Harvest Food Bank at 2045 Harvest Way near the intersection of South Elmo Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Allentown. CACLV will start a fund raising campaign for a new site. The new site has not yet been identified.

According to Jennings, CACLV will also help establish a new Neighborhood Partnership to "bolster" the neighborhoods around Allentown's Neighborhood Improvement Zone.

He said "with a little luck" new "Neighborhood Partnerships" will be organized in four other communities in the Slate Belt. He did not name the target communities.

Jennings also held out hope to businesses owners on Allentown's Seventh Street.

"We will explore new financing tools to enable merchants on Seventh Street who might want to own the buildings they occupy," said Jennings, speaking a lunch crowd of about 250 people in the Hotel Bethlehem.

Jennings pledged to continue with façade improvements, to weatherize homes, distribute more food, to help welfare recipients prepare to enter the workforce and to protect more homeowners from foreclosure.

"The real antidote to poverty is not human services, as critical as they may be, but economic opportunity," said Jennings, emphasizing a fundamental goal of the CACLV. He sees ownership of real assets as the key to transforming society and helping people raise themselves out of poverty.

"We help people build assets," said Jennings. "We help them buy their own homes, start their own businesses and try to create neighborhoods where the winners want to stay and there are no losers."

He chided members of Congress who he said "are Hell-bent on making sure government doesn't solve problems."

CACLV's Board of Directors President Christopher Reid applauded the "tremendous work CACLV is doing in the community."

He introduced Rabbi Allen Juda from the Congregation Brith Sholom who reflected the general attitude of the assembly when he urged the community to share God's injunction to "share your bread; take the homeless in your home and to clothe the needy."

Reid also introduced some of the men and women who have success stories to tell in connection with their association with CACLV.

A video by local photographer and media producer Marco Calderon introduced Pat Berger, who spoke to the group to chronicle how she went from an affluent, happily married mother in a nice home in Bethlehem Township to losing everything when her husband died.

She described how she struggled back, eventually buying an old home "with good bones" in Easton. She credited the West Ward Neighborhood Partnership, a subsidiary of CACLV, with helping her replace sidewalks that previous owners had neglected and that the city of Easton wanted her to repair.

Erica Dillard described how the Sixth Street Shelter had helped her turn her life around.

Ebisa Mulata told the attendees how CACLV and microloans from its Rising Tide Community Load Fund officers help him and his wife open Mariam's Restaurant at 446 North Seventh St. in Allentown. Mulata and his wife offer Ethiopian cuisine for which diners have posted great reviews on Yelp.com.

Carmen Toro, the creator of Beauty Alibi make-up and owner of a new salon of the same name at 16 West Broad St. in Bethlehem, spoke to the sponsors, supporters and board members of CACLV gathered for the annual meeting.

Tora's narrative told her story of how opportunity finds the prepared and the hardworking entrepreneur. Her dream of opening her own business led her to the marketing professionals at CACLV whom she described as "a volunteer committee of some of the most clever and experienced marketing professionals in the Lehigh Valley."

With the help of micro-loan from Rising Tide, she opened her business six months ago.