GOP presidential candidates will participate in the first-ever “poverty summit” moderated by Republican congressman Paul Ryan and South Carolina senator Tim Scott.

The event, which will be hosted by the Jack Kemp Foundation in Columbia, South Carolina, is set to take place in early January. Ryan has long been interested in reaching out to poor communities and devising policies to help those afflicted by the endemic conditions that plague so many of the country’s inner cities. (Over the past few years, Ryan has spent time touring several of them.)

As Mitt Romney’s vice presidential nominee, Ryan tried to focus his energies on these problems, but his efforts were curtailed by the campaign. There was particular frustration with the Romney team’s focus on entrepreneurs — the governor seized on President Obama’s remark that “You didn’t build that!” to champion business owners — at the expense of blue-collar workers and the poor.

The 2016 summit is an obvious effort to steer this cycle’s Republican presidential conversation toward an issue it largely neglected in 2012. The success of that effort will depend on Ryan’s ability to leverage his influence over the cycle’s candidates — obviously diminished from 2012 — in order to get his message out. Perhaps with that in mind, Ryan who is a Catholic, timed his announcement of the event to coincide with the Pope’s arrival in the United States.

— Eliana Johnson is Washington editor of National Review.