The living wage movement is growing across Canada. The private, public, and non-profit sectors are seeing a rapid uptake of employers commited to paying employees a livable wage. Now, municipal governments are considering how the living wage and other income security initiatives are able to reduce poverty for residents and build healthier communities and economies.
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Now is no time to think of what you do not have.
Think of what you can do with what there is.
-Ernest Hemingway
Coming out of the Poverty Reduction Summit in Ottawa in May, 2015, one of the ideas that Paul Born from Tamarack and Brock Carleton from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities had was to develop a paper that explored the increasing interest and involvement of municipalities in poverty reduction work across Canada.
The result is 10 – A Guide for Cities Reducing Poverty that will be presented at the upcoming Cities Reducing Poverty: When Mayors Lead summit in Edmonton 5-7 April.
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In recent months, the living wage has been capturing the attention of local governments across the nation. Following New Westminster’s lead in 2011, Vancouver committed to a living wage last summer, and now Cambridge, Ontario’s City Council has just become the first in Ontario to make the pledge, with Hamilton and Toronto following close behind in consideration of their own policies. But why, what does the municipality add, what does it mean for living wage advocates, employees, and the community?
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I have never thought of myself as courageous. I would use many other words to describe me - thoughtful, reflective, smart, sometimes judgemental but never courageous. That is why the statement...the most courageous thing I have ever done ...is so perplexing.
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We have reached a watershed moment.
After a century of robust development of technological and business innovation, plus several decades of cracking the code of social innovation, the time has come to create an integrated innovation system.
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I have been preparing for the community engagement learning event Tamarack is doing in Ottawa this week, called Community Engagement: The Next Generation. One of the workshops I wanted to do was on engagement of marginalized populations, in particular those living in poverty. My exploration of this topic led me to some provocative writing by Vu Le, who is a writer, speaker, and executive director of Rainier Valley Corps, a capacity building organization with a focus on leveling the playing field for people of colour as well as small, grass roots organizations.
I was particularly drawn to a piece he wrote on his blog about “Trickle-Down Community Engagement,” and his writing became the catalyst for one of the workshops I am doing, aptly called “Avoiding Trickle-Down Community Engagement of the Marginalized.”
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