Getting the Most out of Your Vibrant Communities – Cities Reducing Poverty Membership

Posted on July 19, 2018
By Alison Homer
VC Photo

Vibrant Communities - Cities Reducing Poverty (VC – CRP) is a national collective impact movement aimed at reducing poverty through the place-based efforts of multi-sector roundtables and the alignment of strategies at the municipal, provincial, territorial, and federal levels.

VC – CRP’s primary purpose is to ensure that local poverty reduction initiatives in cities, towns, regions, provinces, and territories are successful. Through our premiere national learning network, we aim to make the work of Cities Reducing Poverty easier and more effective. The national CRP movement reinforces the urgency of our work, supports members to influence policies and systems, and strengthens communication across municipal, provincial/territorial and federal governments to better align our collective actions to tackle poverty.

Sixty local initiatives representing more than 175 municipalities currently belong to the network. Every year more communities join this Pan-Canadian initiative, thereby strengthening our ability to collectively learn from one another, and effectively reduce and eradicate poverty in our communities.

The 2018 Cities Reducing Poverty membership package includes:

  • Two complimentary seats to attend one of two regional poverty reduction summits
  • Allocation of a Manager of Cities including access to one-on-one support
  • Connection to peer-coaching opportunities to troubleshoot issues
  • Priority access to Tamarack's Expert Coaching Centre
  • Access to exclusive city convenor calls with roundtable leaders and staff
  • Invitations to attend private webinars on topics identified as pertinent and pressing by CRP members
  • Access to evaluation and policy expertise

Vibrant Communities supports the Cities Reducing Poverty members in five ways:

  • Coaching (manager of cities, peer coaching, and expert coaching)
  • Communities of Practice (presentation and peer input process formats)
  • Online Learning (website, e-magazine, policy digest, and webinars)
  • Publications (case studies, guides, and papers)
  • Events (national and regional poverty reduction summits)

Coaching

Member Coaching Services

Coaching within the CRP network takes a number of forms, from one-on-one (Manager of Cities), to peer-coaching (within the CRP network), to expert-coaching (Tamarack Directors). Coaching can support members to strengthen relationships, overcome challenges, improve the effectiveness of their work, accelerate action and progress, build capacity, and generate momentum on key levers related to poverty reduction across Canada. It is applicable to members across a variety of challenges and at all stages of their initiative’s development.

Coaching can be process-based, for example, by supporting members to establish essential infrastructure such as setting up a Collective Impact roundtable, developing a poverty reduction strategy, raising funds, or instituting a framework to measure impact. It can also be issue-based, where it delves into specific topics such as housing, health or employment.

For more information, see our CRP Member Coaching Services Brochure 2018.

  • Manager of Cities 
    • Each CRP member is assigned a Manager of Cities who supports members from start-up, through poverty reduction strategies, to documenting and reporting on outcomes, and to achieving sustainability. Managers of Cities build an understanding of members’ work, challenges and successes, work with members to set goals and to document impact, connect them to expert coaches and change leaders across Canada, engage them in learning opportunities, host learning events, and write case studies and guides.
  • Peer Coaching 
    • Peer Coaching is an interactive process between two or more active members and is a proven and powerful way to grow professionally and build one’s leadership capability. It allows members to share successful practices through collaboration, serve as a problem-solving vehicle, increase connectivity between members, create a forum for addressing common challenges, and empower convenors to advance community efforts. This type of coaching can be either informal (e.g. City Managers facilitating CRP members to connect directly) or formal (e.g. peer-input-process [PiP] online troubleshooting sessions).
  • Expert Coaching 
    • Through expert-coaching, CRP members tap into the deep knowledge and experience available through Tamarack Institute Directors. These Expert Coaches bring a strong balance of theory and practice in systemic and grassroots community change, and have a track record of empowering communities to positively affect change at the local level. CRP members are able to access monthly online coaching sessions with Paul Born as part of their membership, and are eligible for a CRP member rate to bring a Tamarack Director to their community, for example, to conduct an in-person training session.

Communities of Practice (CoPs) 

VC-CRP members are able to access a range of CoPs. While many are open to the broader VC learning community, City Convenor CoPs are reserved as an opportunity for CRP members to engage directly with others from within the network.

The following CoPs are currently active, with many more scheduled to launch in fall 2018:

Online learning

Tamarack and Vibrant Communities regularly provide online learning opportunities to CRP members and to their broader learning communities through our website, e-magazine, webinars featuring experts from the field, blogs, case studies, and guides. 

10 GuideThese serve to allow CRP members to learn about innovative and effective tools, approaches, and ideas for tackling poverty. Within the CRP network, online learning also allows members to promote their local poverty reduction efforts to a national audience.

Here are some examples of online learning available to members:

Events

In 2018, Vibrant Communities is hosting two regional poverty reduction summits, Cities Innovating to Reduce Poverty, which brings together community leaders from government, business, and community sectors, and people with lived experience of poverty, to share stories of progress and innovation, foster new ideas, and deepen collaboration. In addition to the main event, CRP members attend an additional full-day gathering geared towards networking, training (e.g. in evaluation and policy), troubleshooting issues, and celebrating successes.

Our Western Regional Summit was held in Vancouver from June 12-13. Registration is now open for our Eastern Regional Summit, to be held in Peel Region, Ontario, from September 18-19, which will be immediately followed by a CRP member gathering September 18-19.

CRP Members can reach out to Manager of Cities at any time: Alison Homer (CRP West); Leena Sharma Seth (CRP East); Natasha Pei (CRP Maritimes).

Not already a CRP Member? Learn more about membership, download our Vibrant Communities - Cities Reducing Poverty Membership Brochure 2018, or email Alison.

Topics:
Alison Homer, Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction Strategy


Alison Homer

By Alison Homer

Advancing a vision of ending poverty in Canada, Alison provides leadership and drives excellence within Communities Ending Poverty (CEP). Her team actions an initial focus on ending working poverty, partnering with thought leaders and members from multiple sectors to identify levers and opportunities, influence policies, and shift systems.

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