The Latest

Chicken Soup Friends

This blog was originally published here and is reposted with the author's permission.

It was a Friday night. I was at home, lying on the couch watching an episode of who knows what through barely open eyes. I was exhausted. Around 3am that morning, I’d gotten in a cab and taken myself to the Emergency Room. I was, the ER doctor told me, having a gallbladder attack (nice ring to it, eh?). Everything turned out just fine but I had to cancel some meetings on Friday and get some rest.

Our Community Can Change | When We Work Together

Later this month, more than two hundred people from across North America and around the world will be meeting in Toronto to learn together and challenge each other to "up our game" in our work of community change.  This is the kind of disruptive leadership that is needed to encourage us all to relentlessly question our own assumptions and approaches in search of more effective ways to tackle our toughest social and environmental challenges.  

Bold action to end poverty in Canada

This article originally appeared in the Canadian Mennonite Journal on June 6, 2016, by Paul Born

I was a young child when my family and I came to Canada as Mennonite refugees from the Ukraine. We were displaced people seeking to create a new life for ourselves. 

My personal experience of poverty has shaped my life’s work. It’s why I founded Tamarack, a non-profit organization that helps people collaborate to tackle the toughest social problems, including poverty. It’s why my long-held, deep hope is to end poverty in Canada.

The Little Red Hen and the Paradox of Community Engagement

Remember the story of the Little Red Hen who tried to engage her friends to help her to plant wheat and then harvest it, make flour and eventually bake bread? She could not engage them until, of course, the bread had come out of the oven and was ready to eat.

The Role of the Citizen

After one of seven Deepening Community with Collective Impact workshops in Australia and New Zealand, I was interviewed by Paul Bishop in Redland City, Australia, about the true cost of deepening community ­ both socially and economically.

A Tribute to Brenda Zimmerman

Brenda Zimmerman, dear friend to Tamarack and a champion of community change and innovation, died verysuddenly in mid-December. She will be deeply missed and she leaves a lasting mark on us all. Like many of you, I was inspired and honoured that Brenda chose to share her newest idea - the concept of “snap back” - with us at the 2014 Collective Impact Summit. Her thinking offers guidance for moving forward despite being surrounded by resilient systems, and we now must share her thinking broadly so that it can live on.