It's a nonprofit that got its start in 1964 as part of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.

This year, community action agencies across the country, including all 120 here in Kentucky, are celebrating their 60th anniversary.

Kentucky Edition spoke to Community Action members from Hazard to Covington to reflect on the impact of their work.

There are 23 separate community action agencies that make up community action in Kentucky.

So Community Action covers every single county in the state of Kentucky.

And our goal in every one of those community action agencies is really to help families to reach economic stability.

Each of those community action agencies goes into the community and assesses what do we need?

Do we need more early childhood education?

And is it housing?

Is it more income alignment and is it more job development?

And then we bring in those particular programs to support those families, really to build the bridges, to help them to reach their goals as individuals and also as communities.

So we do it on an individual level.

We'll work within that region, with local governments, with business, to try to create those pathways again for the families and for those communities to thrive.

A lot of people think that the clients that come into our agencies don't work.

Don't they just lay around and they they draw a check and that and that is not the case at all.

They're out there working and they just don't make enough to make ends meet.

They don't make enough money to be able to make a living wage.

And, you know, a lot of these folks are working two jobs.

So the reality is the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and we help individuals with education and we also help with employment opportunities and to help people become self-sufficient.

I didn't know what I was going to do when I got laid off.

I didn't know what was coming next or helping me go back to school to get my sales and my lineman, my program, and they give me a life lunch, put me in a great direction that's going to help me in the future.

It's going to help my kids a whole lot.

If we didn't have help here, we didn't have all the other resources, then I don't know how we would have made it or how we would have even have gotten to remain in our homes, in our communities.

When your home is flooded and you don't have flood insurance, what do you do?

Basically, Elcock came in with the disaster case managers, the Perry County long term disaster recovery group.

And, you know, we filled out paperwork, we did all those things, but they'd got us back in our home.

They helped with cleanup.

They helped with getting appliances that we needed, furniture, you name it.

We don't look to go in and try to be everything for every community.

If there's something already in a community, like a food pantry or a shelter or whatever the case may be, we look to try to support them rather than replace them, if that makes sense.

My son is actually autistic and I was looking into something that would benefit him.

I looked into Headstart and knew that they were able to work with children with disabilities.

So I began signing him up and that's whenever I learned that they actually needed teachers.

And I started out as a teacher assistant.

I work with not only the children, but I also work with the families.

I help them with different needs that they have.

I help with housing.

I help with transportation, and I help getting referrals for anything that children might need.

And I also help do screenings at the Head Start.

It is so rewarding to know at the end of the day that we are truly making a difference in somebody's life, that we are helping them be able to afford better lives.

Being able to afford families.

We help provide those basic needs and then a springboard to that next level so you don't have to keep coming back for food support.

So you don't have to keep coming back for emergency services.

Nobody wants to do that.

People do not want to ask for help.

They want to find solutions to help them to move forward, to help them to get to where they want to be with their family.

To find out more about your own county's branch of Community Action, Kentucky, visit their website.