Volunteers may download an interview form from KWRU's Web site and use it to interview poor people in their communities. The University of the Poor. The University is designed as an online resource that serves the educational and networking purposes of a conference, which most organizations of the poor could not afford to create or sponsor. The University also offers extensive links to other organizations and an online library that includes videos, training materials, articles and speeches, and audio selections from the Economic Human Rights Choir. Beneficiary of Services Poor people, the homeless, and their allies in the United States and around the world.
Staff includes an executive director, education director, and office manager.
KWRU members contribute thousands of hours of volunteer time in conducting the everyday activities of the organization and its programs. Innovation KWRU's efforts are grounded in the idea that poor people can organize to protest and change the systemic factors that impoverish people despite their desire to be productive. This foundation challenges popular conceptions of poor people as powerless, unproductive, lazy, unorganized, and passive. KWRU shifts the burden of justification away from the shoulders of poor people to the halls of power, where government is called to task for denying basic human rights to those who struggle with a system that often overlooks their needs, undermines their dignity, and denies them access to the most basic means of achieving economic well-being, including jobs at a livable wage, health care, shelter, education, and food. This shift raises the question of whether an economy dominated by corporations and the profit motive is capable of sustaining economic health for all participants.