How has the Vibrant Communities – Cities Reducing Poverty (VC – CRP) network contributed to poverty reduction in Canada? In seeking to answer this central question, the State of Cities Reducing Poverty paper highlights the network’s numerous and varied impacts.
As the paper documents, the VC – CRP multi-sector model has helped facilitate community leadership on poverty, including among mayors and municipal councils, the business community, and people with lived and living experience of poverty. The network has also led and contributed to significant policy and systems changes in domains such as living wage, transportation, housing, and financial empowerment.
Additionally, the paper canvasses the key twenty-first-century movements – e.g., social innovation, national advocacy efforts, and the rise of poverty reduction strategies – that have shaped VC – CRP and built momentum for poverty reduction in Canada. Finally, it explores the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. A key challenge is how to increase the network’s capacity to measurably reduce poverty across Canada. This is also an opportunity, especially in light of the recently released Canadian Poverty Reduction Strategy, which includes an Official Poverty Line and dashboard of indicators.
Since the State of Cities Reducing Poverty paper will be an annual publication, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what could be improved for next year. Feel free to send me an email. I also want to send a big shout out to all of the individuals and groups that shared their input on a draft version of the paper!
Call to Action for Cities Reducing Poverty Members
- Share and discuss the paper with your leadership roundtable
- Share the paper with your mayors, councillors and other elected officials
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