Living SJ Announces Eight Social Innovation Projects

Posted on July 16, 2018
By Living SJ

LivingSJLogo2In May 2017, Living SJ and the Province of New Brunswick announced a funding agreement of $10M over five years for Greater Saint John to test and implement innovative ways to end generational poverty. Saint John has a child poverty rate of 30%, the 2nd highest amongst urban centres in Canada. With a Collective Impact initiative involving more than 100 local partners, their goal is to identify successful strategies that can be scaled and replicated in an effort to put an end to children being born into poverty across New Brunswick.

This June, Living SJ and the collective impact team confirmed the first eight projects that will receive funding. They are:

  1. Scaling Up Working 4 Change - Learn and Go: This project will scale and adapt the existing program to serve 60+ individuals annually as well as heighten alignment of services and policies by ensuring residents of the focus neighbourhoods are connected to desired next steps in their journey out of poverty. An approach with financial incentives will also be tested.
    • Budget and timeframe: $735,700 over 5 years.
  1. Project Manager, Saint John Landbank: This project will provide funding to hire a manager that will implement an affordable housing project, Victoria Commons, which will create 47 new mixed income units in the Old North End. The findings will inform SJLB’s goal of developing affordable housing projects in other priority neighbourhoods.
    • Budget and timeframe: $180,000 over 2 years.
  1. Transitioning to Work: The Saint John Learning Exchange provides adult education and employment programs for over 350 participants each year by using a holistic, continuum of service approach that includes responsive programming driven by individual’s education and employment goals. This project will develop and implement an incentive-based, sustainable model that demonstrates both the service and funding components necessary to successfully assist individuals in their education, training and employment pathways out of poverty.
    • Budget and timeframe: $1,405,388 over 5 years.
  1. Incentives for Bridge to a Brighter Future: The goal of this project is to pilot test the EMPath program (developed in Boston) in Saint John in order to emulate similar success and specifically to fund the financial incentives for participants. The objective is to create a plan for a family that multiple organizations including government departments can help them achieve.
    • Budget and timeframe: $25,000 for 1 year.
  1. Parent-Child Assistance Program (PCAP): This is a four-year pilot to bring a program of tailored, in-home and structured case management to address the needs of pregnant and recently postpartum women who are struggling with addiction in Saint John. This program has been shown to drastically improve the outcomes of participants in terms of addiction management, stable housing, maintaining or regaining guardianship of their children, reducing reliance on government assistance, and family planning. The Social Pediatrics Research Program will work with families, advisors and community stakeholders to adapt this program to the local context and implement in Saint John (the only location in Atlantic Canada).
    • Budget and timeframe: $898,275 over 4 years.
  1. Investing in Differential Funding: Elementary schools with the highest concentrations of poverty will be provided additional resources to help students, from Kindergarten to Grade 2, to overcome learning barriers, achieve early literacy skills and gain the essential educational foundations required for progressive school success. This three-year demonstration project aims to help more children succeed in school, achieve Living SJ’s education targets, and inform education practice and public policy.
    • Budget and timeframe: $1.5 million over 3 years.
  1. Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) for Priority Schools: The addition of a dedicated SLP to serve priority schools will allow for the development of instrumental oral language development strategies. Having a SLP working as a coach with teachers and children help builds the tools that will help to develop oral language skills and support children to learn to read.
    • Budget and timeframe: $80,000 for 1 year.
  1. South Central Peninsula School Task Force: The District Education Council has recommended that a new elementary school be built on the Central Peninsula in Saint John. The task force will act as a sounding board, advising the project team and the Province of New Brunswick on both the needs of the community and opportunities to leverage resources to support the development of an enhanced educational facilities model for the priority neighbourhoods, with the potential to be adapted for new construction and renovation projects throughout the Province.
    • Budget and timeframe: $85,000 for 1 year.


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Topics:
Poverty Reduction, Cities Reducing Poverty, Social Innovation


Living SJ

By Living SJ

Living SJ was formed in 2014 to bring an end to generational poverty in Saint John. It is co-led by a diverse and growing network of 100+ partners working together to improve social outcomes and inform policies and practices that will help us build a brighter future, socially and economically. There are four pillars to success: education, employment, health, and neighbourhoods.

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