By now readers of my blog know that I am all about collective impact. It is a framework that I believe has real merit, under the right circumstances and with the right outcome in mind. But gosh, it is hard work and even though we have alot of experience in collaboration, we do not have the collective impact muscle fully developed yet.
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Over the past 15 years Canadian consumer debt has risen dramatically. Since 2000, the percentage of Canadian debt in relationship to disposable income has risen from 110% of income to about 165%. The change in debt to income ratio represents a 12 year increase of 50%.
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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.
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Seven years ago I mentioned at the dinner table one night that I was interested in drawing meetings. It was a casual remark that my husband took it seriously. He is a committed creative who was helping me navigate a new career in community development after 15 years as FTA (full time artist). After a quick search he found David Sibbet’s Visual Meetings book and surprised me with a gift. This was the beginning of my love affair with sketching meetings.
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Last April, my colleagues hosted Champions for Change in Halifax, Nova Scotia – a three-day Collective Impact gathering – and brought back with them a delicious recipe that I can say, with confidence, is now a staple for many of us. These Energy Bites were provided as a special treat during the event that helped to fuel participants' energy through their intense learning experience. Since then, my dear friend and colleague Sylvia Cheuy has brought these yummy treats to team meetings for the Tamarack Team to enjoy and we do exactly that! Not one Energy Bite remains by the end of the day.
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Last Fall, Tamarack's Paul Born visited Orillia and presented at the City's Georgian College Campus. While there, Paul praised the community for their recent Sunshine Initiative - a bus, transformed into a mobile canvas, driven around town with an invitation for residents to use the bus as their personal suggestion box for how they would like to see their community improved. This project is a wonderful example of deepening community and working towards a common goal. Paul left feeling inspired by Orillia residents, praising them for their citizen-led initative: "Collaboration isn't just about working together; it's about common energy. It's all of us working to implement a plan."
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