Cities Connect October 2016

Hi there,

There is a growing understanding that a movement to end poverty must resonate with the broader public, in order to reach beyond the limited actions that non-profit organizations, funders, and collaboratives can provide. As you consider this, also note that the public won’t rally behind a plan with dozens of priorities and a myriad of strategies and actions. Changing public perception and understanding is one thing, but engaging the general public in action is quite another matter - and perhaps is what really matters. We are building a movement with the eradication of poverty as our end goal, and carefully selected Game Changers at the core of our work. In this issue, you are invited to participate in Vibrant Communities' exploration of Game Changers.

Next month we are partnering with Prosper Canada to bring you ideas on how Financial Empowerment can help your collaborative reduce poverty. If you have any resources you'd like to share, please send them to natasha@tamarackcommunity.ca.

Sincerely,

The Vibrant Communities Canada Team

Featured Stories

Identifying 'Game Changers' in Poverty Reduction

Vibrant Communities' innovative Game Changer approach to poverty reduction cross-cuts our members’ local work, highlights high impact priority areas and strategies, and informs our shared evaluation process and framework. By working with our members to zone in on strategies that elicit an array of positive, significant, and cascading outcomes towards poverty reduction, we coordinate and enhance the work we are doing as a network and accelerate our collective impact in reaching our goals to end poverty.

In conjunction with Cities Reducing Poverty members, we have identified eight Game Changers for your consideration and discussion. Follow the links below and consider if our key priority areas resonate with you and your team:

View VC Canada's early poverty reduction Game Changers and participate in the consultation.

Read the paper on the Game Changer framework to help you identify the 'Game Changers' in your locality or field of practice.

Sharing Stories of Success: The Winnipeg Poverty Reduction Council

When we heard from Winnipeg's Mayor Brian Bowman last April at the Cities Reducing Poverty Summit, we were inspired by the city's commitment to income security and education as key levers that residents could access to break free of poverty. In this article, learn about the full multi-sectoral Council and their collective impact approach to poverty reduction: how they collaborated on and identified shared priorities, and how they are engaging the community on their first aspiration - independence through income.

Read about the WPRC's engagement process for identifying Indigenous Youth Employment as their next strategic focus.

Evaluation Resources from Mark Holmgren

"My thinking about evaluation is influenced by others who are seeking better or new ways to measure progress or success. I look for resources that challenge my thinking and biases and prompt me to consider alternatives to how I currently think." Here are a few of the resources that Mark has been looking at as VCC continues to work toward its roll-out of the Game Changer Approach to Poverty Reduction Strategy and Evaluation. While he is not in agreement with everything contained in the below resources, they have been helpful in his work nonetheless. Take a closer look at:

New Ways to Evaluate Impact: Human-centered design and systems thinking can help evaluate social impact in a global context

Evaluating Complex Social Initiatives: A new brief offers guidance and tools to support the evaluation of complex programs when traditional evaluation won’t suffice

Evaluating Social Innovations

Social Innovation Impact: The truth about indicators

Coaches' Corner

If you are a VCC - CRP Roundtable Member wanting to hire a coach, but aren't sure where to begin looking, we'd like to help you start by considering how Franco or Chris could help your group move closer to its goals. Contact Alison for more information on the program or to connect with a coach.

Franco Savoia is the Non-Governmental Co-Chair of the Alberta Inter Agency Council on Homelessness, and the Executive Director of Vibrant Communities Calgary. Mr. Savoia was the President and CEO of the Edmonton YMCA from 2000 to 2012 and also of the Wood Buffalo YMCA from 2009. Franco has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Windsor and a Masters of Divinity from the University of Toronto.

Coaching areas of expertise:

Backbone organization governance
Information flow and engagement
Setting up a collective impact structure
Bringing poverty reduction work from municipality back to the community

Key Documents: • Enough for All Strategy • Report to Community 2015: A year in review

Franco Savoia
Vibrant Communities Calgary

Chris Soderquist has over twenty years experience as a strategy and leadership consultant/educator, with a diverse set of clients from the private and public sectors. He is a Visiting Executive Lecturer at the Darden School of Business (University of Virginia), an instructor in Marlboro College’s graduate school, and a designer and instructor of the Boeing Engineering Leadership Program.

Coaching areas of expertise:

Adaptive leadership
Systems thinking
Conversational capacity
Strategic planning
Finding leverage

Key Documents: • Website – Finding High Leverage • Adaptive Learning: A Pivotal Competence for Collective Impact • Video – Finding Leverage

Chris Soderquist
Pontifex Consulting

News, Resources, and Tools

All About Poverty Reduction Strategies

The Federal Government will be consulting with Canadians on the national Tackling Poverty Together strategy. Learn about the consultation process, and get ready, beginning with this discussion paper.

If you are in or around Calgary, Alberta, learn about integrating a human rights approach in your poverty reduction strategy with this graduate-level training workshop.

Learn about the partnership which the Leeds Grenville Poverty Reduction Alliance has launched with SmartSAVER, to help more children and families access their unclaimed federal education monies.

Meet Vibrant Calgary's new Indigenous Strategist, and understand what Pamela's role looks like on a weekly basis.

Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood gave us a live tour of their innovative poverty reduction strategy during the Community Change Institute this past September. VC Canada's own, Kirsti Battista, provides us with a glimpse at their main activities.

Resources for Building a Movement

Find Al Etmanski's 8 Questions for Thinking and Acting like a Movement, and then listen to the webinar for a deeper dive on the meaning behind his query.

Invest a worthwhile 3 minutes in absorbing this TEDTalk by Derek Sivers on How to Start a Movement (Hint: it takes two).

Delve into the world of social media and optimize your engagement with these 7 Facebook Tools You Can Use to Build a Movement, recommended by Forbes.

Watch it again: Ben Hecht and Mark Holmgren talk about how we create systems change and disrupt our traditional paradigms to create equitable outcomes for citizens.

Join a movement - for decent work. If you are in Ontario, this podcast explains 6 critical actions you can take to influence the provincial government's Changing Workplaces Review. If you are elsewhere in Canada, consider how your initiative can support progress in decent work by aligning your goals and core message to reflect the rights that we all have - for work that is decent and dignified.
- Get familiar with the issues: Still Working on the Edge - Building Decent Jobs from the Ground Up
- Read the Government's technical paper: The Changing Workplaces Interim Report

Income Security Initiatives

Living Wage Week is October 31 - November 6, 2016. Keep an eye on social media under the hashtag #livingwage, tag @LivingWageCDA, and encourage your local employers to consider signing up.

The City of Vancouver becomes Canada's first Big City living wage employer.

The company that raised all its employees' wages to $70 000 per year is beginning to see results, and they are similar to the benefits being reported by living wage employers.

Local Hamilton bakery wins the Globe & Mail Small Business Challenge, with thanks to their commitment to paying a living wage.

Proud liveable wage employers are popping-up in sometimes the most unexpected places. Hear from a Portland restauranteur about the 'gratuity-free' movement in the United States.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has published resources for the Basic Income movement:
- Policy experts weigh-in on potential risks and benefits of a basic income
- Compare basic income models and their projected impact on poverty reduction

The Calgary Homelessness Foundation's Nick Falvo also provides a list of 10 Things to Know About Canada's Guaranteed Annual Income Debate.

New Programs, Practices, and Policies

New legislation will mean an enhanced Canadian Pension Plan for seniors.

Caledon Institute for Social Policy presents an overview of the policy situation and support system for people living with disabilities to access and sustain employment.

St. Albert will become Canada's first Smart City, improving access to decision-making and public services through technology.

Find more on Ottawa's YAM CAM 2016: an initiative aimed at youth-at-risk that builds new skills in film, and teaches kids that their voice and their perspectives matter too.

If you are in a rural or remote community, find these Six Tips for Conducting Meangingful Evaluation, a summary that is brought to you from Tamarack's Evaluation Community of Practice.

Get Involved

A Tamarack Institute Feature Webinar

Neighbourhood-Based Strategies that Reduce Poverty: The Parkdale People's Economy Project
Thursday, October 27 | 1:00 - 2:00 pm EDT

In the first of a 3-part learning series on neighbourhood-based initiatives that reduce poverty, Victor Willis, Executive Director of The Parkdale Action - Recreation Centre (PARC) will join us to discuss how their community has collectively agreed up on a common set of indicators and have broken through organizational barriers to build a cohesive social infrastructure. Learn about their key lessons and challenges as together they build a more equitable local economy.

Register Now

More upcoming webinars: An Introduction to Financial Empowerment
Partner webinars: Insights on Hosting Volunteer Income Tax Clinics

Featured Community of Practice (CoP)

Municipal Government Representatives
Monday, November 14 | 1:00 - 2:00 pm EST

The Municipal Government Representatives CoP group will spend the hour next month discussing affordable transportation policies from across the country. We will hear specifically from Peterborough, Ontario. This call is most applicable to city staff working on the poverty reduction portfolio, and allows shaing of comparable challenges, solutions and successes from other cities.

Join the group to attend the next call

Evaluating Community Impact
Hamilton, Ontario | November 15-17, 2016

Evaluating Community Impact is one of Tamarack Institute's signature three-day learning events presenting the latest thinking in evaluation. Delivered by Mark Cabaj and Liz Weaver, expect to walk away with: foundational ideas and key principles for assessing community change, evaluation planning tools, and outcome evaluation tools. This event is for anyone with programs that need to be evaluated, those who are part of a collaborative and are seeking to understand how to evaluate the initiative, or if evaluation is part of your job description.

Cities Reducing Poverty members recieve 2-for-1 seat pricing and can use their coaching matching credits up to $1,000 to attend this event.

Register Now

Optimize Your Impact

Join the 50+ cities, towns, regions, provinces and territories that are already members of Vibrant Communities - Cities Reducing Poverty, a learning community and movement aimed at reducing poverty for 1 million Canadians through aligned poverty reduction strategies at the municipal, provincial and federal levels. Benefits of membership include access to poverty indicator data, professional and peer coaching, free seats to the annual Cities Reducing Poverty face to face gathering, online seminars and practice calls, access to fundraising and evaluation support, and full access to the online learning community at www.vibrantcanada.ca.

Download our brochure and connect with Kirsti Battista, Manager of Cities at kirsti@tamarackcommunity.ca or 647 213 6757.

The Vibrant Communities Newsletter is brought to you by:

Tamarack Institute
University of Waterloo, Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement, Conrad Grebel University College
Waterloo, ON
N2L 3G6, Canada
Tel: 519-885-5155
Email: tamarack@tamarackcommunity.ca
Web: http://vibrantcommunities.ca
Web: http://tamarackcommunity.ca

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