Photo of Njoki Mbũrũ, Danya Pastuszek, Marcie DeWitt, Anur Mehdic, and Margaret Wanyoike at the Victoria Forum in August 2024. Shared with permission.
The Tamarack Institute is a registered Canadian charity dedicated to ending poverty in all its forms, for good. We support communities to enable true, long-term change.
Late last month, I attended the 2024 Victoria Forum, a gathering with hundreds of other guests on the traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) peoples, also known as the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations communities.
It was about trust
The gathering centred an important question: How might we rebuild the trust that’s at the root of democracy and peace, a regenerative economy, and social and environmental justice?
Attendees also got primers on financing approaches that direct financial capital toward social outcomes.
Here are a few takeaways.
Local prosperity and a sustainable economic system are possible, and many people are working to realize them.
This sustainable system values collaboration and interdependency and centres long-term wellbeing for all living things.
This system recognizes that no single solution is transformative on its own. It creates mechanisms and practices that enable interactions across “scales.” It stands to bring together hyper-local, regional, national, and international collaboratives, with principled, outcomes-focused, and people-centred approaches to planning, decision-making, learning, and improvement.
Local collaboratives are an important piece of this ecosystem.
Many local collaboratives have used innovative financing to catalyze positive social, economic, or environmental outcomes, often at a community-wide scale. Local collaboratives have developed zero-interest loans for people experiencing poverty; used social impact bonds to invest in kindergarten readiness (St. John, NB, and Salt Lake City, UT); deployed repayable capital to develop social enterprises that reduce poverty; and used community-driven investment projects to improve employment outcomes among newcomers (Peel Region, ON) and graduation rates among youth (Portage la Prairie, MB).
People working together in their places know their context, assets, landscape, actors, and possibilities. They often have practices for evaluation, accountability, learning, and improvement. They can coordinate social finance tools with the many other strategies that they’re aligning toward a shared geography and goal. This can lead to more context-informed supports and beneficial outcomes.
Local communities seed policy and other systems changes.
In Victoria, I participated in a panel focused on Community Engagement in Systems Transformation with Tamarack Institute partners from Alberni Clayoquot and New Westminster, BC. My colleague Njoki Mbũrũ moderated brilliantly.
Marcie DeWitt (from the Alberni Clayoquot Health Network), Anur Mehdic (with the City of New Westminster Community Planning Team), and Margaret Wanyoike (with New Westminster’s Poverty Reduction and Development Association) shared examples of when the voices of those made most marginal have swayed local public policies towards more equitable practices and outcomes.
It was a story-based, authentic, laughter-infused conversation. We reflected on language, decolonization, compensating and recognizing lived experience, and what can go right when policies are designed with those experiencing oppression. Read more in the case study that Anur co-authored.
Local communities play key roles in most ecosystems, including the social finance ecosystem.
“What’s the work that needs to be done, and who is best positioned to do it?” is a question that partnership-builders ask frequently. The actors needed in the social finance ecosystem are emerging, and I see new opportunities for local collaboratives to test tools, sustain impactful strategies, raise capital, and provide critical information from those most impacted by inequitable systems. Community collaboratives are a critical piece of the social finance ecosystem.
We must make the work for just transitions irresistible.
On a panel that the Honourable Ratna Omidvar moderated on Cross-Sector Collaboration and Societal Transformation, Dallas Gislason of the South Island Prosperity Partnership, Leslie Woo CRE® of CivicAction, and I spoke about - well - how we speak about approaches to social change. Understanding what people care about and what they see as their barriers can help us figure out how to talk to and not through each other. Defining terms using stories, examples, and issues that people know best is something I’ll continue to work on.
Art expands, connects, and helps us see and feel things in memorable ways.
On the final day of the Forum, a leader who reflected on the power of creative approaches, particularly in spaces where we’ve become too used to quantitative and text-based ones. This resource by my colleagues Lisa Attygale and Sonja Miokovich – with contributions from Megan Nimigon, Hiba Abdallah, Chris Pandolfi, Mel Kapognies, and Mark Reinhart – sparks further thought on the power of art-based engagement in a world of data.
Gratitude
Thank you to the conveners, designers, speakers, and moderators, including Steven Huddart, Saul Klein, Zoey Wells, and dozens of volunteers. Thank you to the people whose work meant we had food, water, lodging, and meeting space and to my fellow travelers for their wisdom and collaboration. And thanks to the many team members and family members and neighbors and friends whose work back home enables work like this.
Finally, I thank the generational land and water stewards of the places we met – the lək̓ʷəŋən People, known today as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations – who continue to model what it means to tread lightly and be in good relationship with one another.
Deepen Your Learning
- Learn more about the Victoria Forum
- Read about the Case for Arts-Based Engagement
- Watch a webinar recording about Using Social Finance to Catalyze Place-Based Change
