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Alison Homer

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.

Recent Posts

Calgary's Enough for All: Canada's First Financial Empowerment Model

Posted by Alison Homer on April 5, 2018

Financial vulnerability affects many people in Calgary. Wages are not keeping up with the rapidly increasing cost of living, and most people living below the poverty line belong to households in which at least one person is working. Many people are living above the poverty line, yet still experience financial vulnerability due to low levels of savings and high levels of debt.

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Towards a Canadian Poverty Reduction Strategy: What We Heard About Poverty So Far

Posted by Alison Homer on February 26, 2018

The Honourable Jean‑Yves Duclos, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, announced the release of the Canadian Poverty Reduction Strategy: What We Heard About Poverty So Far report, on Tuesday February 20th via a Facebook Live broadcast. 

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Towards a Canadian Poverty Reduction Strategy: What We Heard About Poverty So Far

Posted by Alison Homer on February 26, 2018

The Honourable Jean‑Yves Duclos, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, announced the release of the Canadian Poverty Reduction Strategy: What We Heard About Poverty So Far report, on Tuesday February 20th via a Facebook Live broadcast. 

The report captures invaluable feedback contributed by Canadians through a large-scale Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) nationwide Canadian Poverty Reduction Strategy public engagement process.

The process was started in February 2017 with events led by Minister Duclos, Parliamentary Secretary Adam Vaughan, other Government of Canada ministers and Government officials, and projects led by National Indigenous Organizations, Tamarack’s Vibrant Communities (VC), and the consulting firm Ference and Company.

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Strength in numbers: Targeting labour force participation to improve prosperity in Ontario

Posted by Alison Homer on January 19, 2018

In its 16th Annual Report, Strength in numbers: Targeting labour force participation to improve prosperity in Ontario, Ontario’s Panel on Economic Growth & Prosperity analyzes Ontario's GDP per capita compared to ten similar peer jurisdictions (Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, the Netherlands, Tennessee, Sweden, Michigan, Australia, British Columbia, and Québec) and analyzes the labour force participation rate of youth, women, older workers, and Indigenous Peoples in Ontario.

The analysis reveals that Ontario continues to experience a ‘prosperity gap’ – GDP per capita is $5,600 below its peer jurisdictions.

Removing the barriers faced by these four groups has the potential to close Ontario's prosperity gap and could add $54.0 billion to the economy.

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Towards a Canadian Poverty Reduction Strategy

Posted by Alison Homer on June 8, 2017

Tamarack’s Vibrant Communities Canada (VCC) is contributing to the Government of Canada’s large-scale public engagement process towards a federal Canadian poverty reduction strategy.  Through a partnership with Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), VCC supported 27 Cities Reducing Poverty (CRP) members to host 31 consultations across 9 provinces and territories, representing over 600 participants. ESDC will be collating feedback from these consultations into a What We Heard report that will be presented to the Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development.

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Six tips for conducting meaningful evaluation in rural and remote communities

Posted by Alison Homer on September 22, 2016

In planning for the Evaluating Community Impact Community of Practice (Eval CoP), members participated in two summer working group sessions to highlight challenges they faced in their poverty-related evaluation work, and brainstormed topics, content and speakers that could address them. One area that members were greatly interested in learning more about was ‘How to conduct meaningful evaluation in rural settings’.

In response, we invited Dr. Jeannette Waegemakers Schiff, associate professor in the Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary, to join our September call to share her experiences working on two studies: 'Housing First in Rural Canada' and 'Rural Alberta Homelessness', as well as to share her top tips to more effectively conduct evaluations in rural and remote communities.

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