Community Action Agencies were created in 1964 as a part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty through the Economic Opportunity Act. The ultimate purpose of the “Act” was to give an opportunity for upward mobility to those who had been historically unable to participate in the mainstream of American life. The Economic Opportunity Act stated that the basic purpose of Community Action was “to stimulate a better focusing of all available local, State, private and Federal resources upon the goal of enabling low income families and low income individuals of all ages, in rural and urban areas, to attain the skills, knowledge, and motivations and secure the opportunities needed for them to become self sufficient.” Community Action Agencies were purposefully established under a new, neutral Department to enable equal access of government funding from all Departments (excerpted from http://www.caajlh.org/history.aspx, accessed Jan. 2010).