The Rev. Jennifer Jones-Bridgett is executive director the Louisiana chapter of People Improving Communities through Organizing, also known as PICO Louisiana or PICO LIFT (Louisiana Interfaith Together). This network of more than 100 faith communities has developed a “Covenant to Rebuild Louisiana,” which calls for clergy to work together with government leaders.

Jim Pate is executive director of New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, which worked to clean up homes damaged by Katrina and to build hundreds of new houses.

Roberta Avila is executive director of Steps Coalition and former executive director of the Interfaith Disaster Task Force of South Mississippi.

Diana Jones Wilson is president of Faith Partnerships Inc., a network of congregations based in Raleigh, N.C., that works collaboratively to address issues of poverty.

John A. Powell is executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University in Columbus. He also holds the Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the university’s Moritz College of Law. Contact powell through Tara McCoy.

Mark R. Rank is a professor of social welfare at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All (Oxford University Press, 2004). His focus is on poverty, social welfare and economic inequalities.

The Twenty-First Century Foundation (21CF), based in New York, works to support African-American philanthropy for groups involved with community organizing, advocacy and leadership development.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is an advocacy group of low- and moderate-income families, with national offices in Brooklyn, N.Y. Contact Charles Jackson, press coordinator.

Havidán Rodríguez is former director of the Disaster Research Center and professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware in Newark.