Cities Reducing Poverty is a collective impact movement aimed at reducing poverty for 1-million Canadians. In 2002, Tamarack, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, and Caledon Institute of Social Policy created an action-learning experiment called Vibrant Communities Canada and worked with 13 cities to test if a place-based approach could move the needle on poverty. Their collective impact over ten years was significant with a number of cities reporting a 10% reduction in poverty and an overall impact for 202,931 low-income Canadians.
In 2012, Tamarack created a national movement called Cities Reducing Poverty to allow more cities to learn from one another and scale their impact. Simply stated, membership in Cities Reducing Poverty is organized to make the work of municipalities and local poverty reduction roundtables easier and more effective. As a movement, Cities Reducing Poverty also aims to align poverty reduction strategies at the municipal, provincial and federal levels.
This is a free bi-monthly online magazine from Cities Reducing Poverty that offers the latest news, resources and tools in poverty reduction as well as information for all of our upcoming learning opportunities.
Check out our latest editions:
The Vibrant Communities – Cities Reducing Poverty 2020 Impact Report is our first attempt at capturing and communicating national trends in poverty reduction and the important ways in which member Cities Reducing Poverty collaboratives are contributing to those changes. This impact report is meant to inspire more organizations, groups and associations to track, identify and communicate their impact.
Through the COVID-19 crisis, Vibrant Communities – Cities Reducing Poverty (VC–CRP) has responded to meet urgent community needs through a variety of mechanisms and partnerships. Our 81 members, representing 328 communities, have demonstrated creativity, commitment, and compassion as they support their communities’ most vulnerable.
This tool provides a compilation of Cities Reducing Poverty members’ anticipated vs. actual timeframes for developing their community-wide poverty reduction strategies. Review the areas of work that tend to bubble up, gain advice from the lead organizers, and readjust your own work plan.
This guide was developed to outline a proven, appreciative inquiry approach that Vibrant Communities – Cities Reducing Poverty has developed to collaboratively establish the foundations for a community-wide poverty reduction plan by developing a common agenda.
Tracking, counting, and reporting the number of volunteer hours spent on a program or project? It may be interesting data, but it’s likely not indicating whether your initiative is having its intended result or moving the needle on a complex issue like poverty.
A commonly expressed challenge within the Cities Reducing Poverty learning community is how to get to a common agenda for collective impact. This guide will support communities with milestones and resources that can help lay foundations for developing a community-wide common agenda.
Informed by the 10 Lived/Living Experience Advisory Committee, this guide was written to support poverty-reduction groups to meaningfully engage people with lived/living experience. It celebrates the potential that can be unlocked when these individuals are included and empowered to drive antipoverty work.
This Community of Practice is a committed group of individuals with a common desire to learn from each other, to enable professional self-development, and to build capacities of their local poverty reduction initiatives.
This Community of Practice is for municipal or regional government staff who are responsible for, or directly involved in, poverty reduction efforts in their official governmental capacity.
Members Only
This Community of Practice is for government representatives of all provinces and territories who are responsible for, or directly involved in, poverty reduction efforts in their official capacity.
Members Only
This Community of Practice is for individuals who belong to the Cities Reducing Poverty network to share ideas and information about their local poverty reduction efforts.
Members Only
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