The Buffalo Urban League was established in 1927 by an interracial group of prominent citizens. They united to address the employment , housing , and social needs of African-Americans migrating from the South to the North and the various immigrant populations who had settled in the City of Buffalo.

CAO was then designated as the official antipoverty agency for Erie County. Since its inception, CAO has had to struggle to survive while continuing to provide services, which encourage active citizen participation to affect educational, political, economic, and social change. Since its existence, the Community Action Organization has never lost sight of its original mandate "citizen participation." Citizen participation makes community action unique and is the one ingredient that makes elected officials responsive to the needs of a community.

The primary objective of The S.E.N.S.E.S. Foundation is to equip the youth of this region with the necessary knowledge and values that would give them the greatest opportunity to lead a happy, healthy and successful adulthood. The S.E.N.S.E.S.Foundation understands that this is a multi-layered and consistent process. We have constructed all of our functional objectives around the achievement of our aforementioned common goal. Each objective is written as an attainable cause and we have identified effects that the success of our program will directly have on the community.