This week the Toronto Star featured an article on the newest Ashoka Fellows – the visionaries in our midst, the people with bold ideas, the trailblazers – and we at Tamarack are so proud that Paul Born has been recognized for his approach to addressing complex social issues by capitalizing on the power of local collaboration.
Ashoka is an alliance of social innovators who have made the world – or their piece of it – a better place, and Ashoka is sharing stories about these innovators in the hopes of motivating others to consider their role as changemakers too.
Here’s a snippet from the article:
“The first inductee is Paul Born, founder and president of the Tamarack Institute. He turned the traditional approach to poverty reduction upside down. Parliamentary resolutions, provincial strategies and academic studies don’t work, he argued. The way to fight entrenched poverty is from the ground up, bringing together local residents, civic leaders, employers, labour groups and community agencies. And he proved it.
Over the past 13 years, Born has shown 84 municipalities how to tackle unemployment, social isolation and poverty by harnessing local resources. He began with his own city of Waterloo and took the concept nationwide, working with citizens to solve problems that stymie world leaders.
So far Tamarack has lifted more than 200,000 Canadian households out of poverty. Its target is 1 million households by 2017. “The ultimate goal is to end poverty in Canada, one city at a time,” Born says.”
Read the full article here