Our purpose is to permanently end the poverty and exploitative treatment of Boston’s service workers, the underemployed & unemployed & others living on low incomes. We formed in 1977, as living wage factory jobs were rapidly departing, seeing the need for a self-help, collective effort to counter economic deprivation and inequality (now deepening with the growth of temporary, contingent and gig jobs). ESWA founding members set a guiding principle: those suffering from poverty need to be directly involved in building solutions. We continue to build an all-volunteer run, non-government funded self-help membership association as a means for low-income workers — mostly non-unionized due to law and circumstance, largely people of color and including many immigrants — & others with low incomes to join together to change our conditions. We organize a free of charge Benefit Program of emergency food, clothing, legal advice, advocacy & more that meets survival needs made possible through the active involvement of the wider community while we build the strength of a collective voice through organization as a material manifestation of hope. We oppose doubly-harmful utility practices where fossil-fuel reliant companies also shut off service to the vulnerable. We are responding to the COVID-19 disaster that hits low-income residents hardest. Our grassroots strength, 100% volunteer, enables us to mobilize immediately in response to crises, 7 days a week.