Total Action for Progress

VTIPG Senior Research Associate David Moore has collaborated with Roanoke-based Total Action for Progress (TAP) since 2016. TAP is a community non-profit organization, founded in 1964, which has worked since, in a variety of nationally-recognized ways, to fight poverty and to build resilience and opportunities for residents of low-income communities.   TAP partners with low-income residents directly as they identify steps to address their perceived needs.  The non-profit now offers an array of programs in education, employment training, family services and more.

Since 2016, Moore has helped TAP expand and deepen its workforce and labor related work in his role as Project Director of the organization’s SwiftStart program.  That initiative assists unemployed and underemployed parents with child care responsibilities to access training to prepare for careers in health care, information technology or advanced manufacturing. It does so by bundling substantive education with tuition assistance and child care as well as other supports and intensive mentoring to help ensure that participants successfully prepare for new employment.

In October 2020, TAP announced a new fundraising initiative, Bringing Hope Home.  This annual campaign is aimed at raising funds to provide programming that assists people in the communities the organization serves. Money raised through this effort will support three key areas of TAP's work: Education and Employment, Domestic Violence and Family Services and Housing and Financial Services.