| ABOUT US
WHAT IS ESWA
Eastern Service Workers Association (ESWA), a free and voluntary, unincorporated, private membership association, unites Philadelphia’s lowest-paid service workers and their allies to fight to end poverty conditions and the government policies that create them. We recognize that in order to organize, we must take collective action to ensure our day-to-day survival. ESWA’s benefit program performs neither acts of charity nor isolated acts of goodwill, but rather helps members to obtain what is rightfully theirs in a context that promotes their best interests on all levels. ESWA is 100% volunteer and takes no government funding or other funding with strings attached.
HERE UNTIL POVERTY ISN’T!
When it can be said by any country in the world: my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and government. Independence is my happiness, the world is my country and my religion is to do good.
— Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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| TAKE ACTION
What Volunteers Do
Volunteers work shoulder-to-shoulder with ESWA members to build a strong organization that can fight to eliminate the poverty conditions we face. ESWA’s Benefit Program assists ESWA members with basic necessities while we fight, and volunteers play an important role in delivering these benefits. Volunteers assist on food and clothing distributions, they work with participating attorneys and doctors as lay advocates, learning how to overcome barriers for ESWA members to obtain what is rightfully theirs. Volunteers also learn to lead the organizing work required to win victories including neighborhood canvasses, housemeetings and community outreach.
| MEMBERSHIP ASSOCIATION
Who Are Our Members
ESWA’s members are the backbone of the economy: we build and clean homes and office buildings, work in warehouses and fulfillment centers, we do food service and healthcare, we care for children and the elderly, we live on fixed incomes and do a variety of other vital jobs including hotel and office maintenance, yet often receive wages that don’t cover survival needs for a family. ESWA members join together with concerned residents, students, professionals, clergy and local businesses on a volunteer basis to achieve a permanent solution to the problems experienced by low-paid service workers in Philadelphia.
| POSITIVE IMPACT
Members Helping Members
Since 1976, ESWA members and volunteers have built an 11‑point self-help, membership benefit program including emergency and supplemental food, clothing, preventive medical care, non-emergency dental care, legal advice, and much more. These benefits respond to our members’ immediate survival needs to keep us on our feet while we organize to gain control over our living and working conditions, and bring about an end to poverty once and for all.
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Volunteer
$100
Government Funding
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Members Signed