The Latest

It is a Total Team Effort

Vibrant Communities was pleased to recently present a webinar with Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson, host of our 2016 Cities Reducing Poverty summit, and Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger, who will host this year’s summit from April 4-6. Their conversation was facilitated by Brock Carlton, President of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. If you didn’t get the chance to join that webinar, we’ve pulled out some excerpts from the conversation for you below. Time annotations are included so you can click through the webinar recording to hear more (full recording available below).

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Mandatory Winter Tires and Poverty

Yes, perhaps an odd title for a posting. I was on my way back home from meeting downtown with Alberta Government colleagues who also work in the poverty reduction arena and I heard this call-in show about winter tires, and more to the point, about whether or not winter tires should be mandatory.

They are mandatory in Quebec now, but even in some provinces without a mandatory requirement, more than 80% of drivers have winter tires. Not so in Alberta, where the percentage is just over 50%. I'm not sure about other low percentage-provinces, but here is what went through my mind.

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More about the Game-Changer Approach to Poverty Reduction

As some of you know, I have written about and I am continuing to work on what I call a Game-Changer Approach to Poverty Reduction Strategy and Evaluation. You can read my initial paper HERE. And a recording of a webinar I did with Mark Cabaj is HERE.

I have been asked about the difference between Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) and this game-changer approach I am working on with my colleagues at Vibrant Communities Canada. The game-changers we have identified are: Housing, Transportation, Education, Health, Income and Jobs, Food Security, Financial Empowerment, and Early Childhood Development. All of these are aligned with SDoH, but there is, I suggest, more to what we are exploring than social determinants of health.

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Going Deeper – Building our Trust Account

In a previous blog, I explored the components of trust including Stephen M.R. Covey’s 5 waves of trust from his book The Speed of Trust. This blog will go a little deeper, exploring how to build a personal trust account.

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Art, Science and Community Connections

Our connectedness to one and other is often what is best about being human.

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Telling a Neighbourhood Resiliency Story by Reading the Data

When Community Resilience to Extreme Weather (CREW) decided to pilot a neighbourhood resiliency map for Toronto’s Wards 13 & 14 it asked Jose A. Lao and Santessa Henriques for help. Resiliency is the ability of a community to cope with extreme stressors, make the very best of them, and bounce back afterwards. It sounds straightforward but measuring it is not so simple. 

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