About the project:  (from web site)

The InterValley Project (IVP) is a New England organizing network directed by its member organizations. They are the Granite State Organizing Project (GSOP), the Naugatuck Valley Project (NVP) in Connecticut, the Merrimack Valley Project (MVP) and the Pioneer Valley Project (PVP) in Massachusetts and the Rhode Island Organizing Project (RIOP). We are currently working with Maine religious, labor and community leaders to help them organize a sixth IVP-model organization.

The IVP Model of Organizing

IVP offers a national model of community economic empowerment. Its regional organizations of congregations, labor union locals, community and tenant groups combine citizen organizing and democratic economic development strategies to save and create jobs, affordable housing and critical public services in some of the oldest and poorest industrial areas in the nation. The oldest of the IVP groups was organized in 1983. The five IVP groups formalized their working relationship by creating IVP as a staffed network in 1997.

Our Membership

Membership in IVP provides each local organization with access to organizing, leadership and staff development, research, staff recruitment, and fund-raising expertise far beyond what is available at the local level alone. On behalf of its current member groups, IVP also actively develops new organizing and development strategies, as well as organizing new IVP member groups in New England. 

Our Communities

IVP communities include the cities of Lowell, Lawrence, Springfield and Holyoke, Massachusetts; Waterbury, Connecticut; Providence, Pawtucket and Central Falls, Rhode Island; Manchester, Nashua and Concord, New Hampshire and their surrounding towns. Each has very significant numbers of poor new immigrants and a large proportion of their residents receives public assistance.

They suffer from the loss of union-represented skilled manufacturing jobs, vital public services, and private investment. With the loss of these resources these communities often lose their next generation of talented young people. With reduced participation in civic life, they often endure management by public officials who are incompetent, corrupt or both. Decisions affecting access to critical public and private services in these communities are often made with little or no input from members of these communities.

Leadership Development for Participation in Civil and Economic Life

IVP organizations develop leadership skills in hundreds of local leaders every year and help them build power for participation in civil and economic life by teaching them how to organize strong regional organizations across lines of religion, race, ethnicity, class, age and geography that can act on public issues of their choosing. Where it makes sense, IVP groups use democratic economic development strategies as well. These have led to the creation of worker-owned firms, community land trusts and resident-owned housing developments.