The Latest

Engaging People with Lived/Living Experience in Poverty Reduction

Multi-sectoral collaboration between governments, businesses, non-profit organizations, and people with lived/living experience of poverty has been recognized as a core principle of effective poverty-reduction work since the establishment of Vibrant Communities in 2002.

People with lived/living experience deeply understand the realities of poverty. Their stories and experiences serve as powerful tools for building compassion, and for disrupting and clarifying a community’s understanding of its root causes and scope. The invaluable expertise of these individuals adds strength and resiliency to poverty-reduction work, and their first-hand knowledge of systemic barriers is invaluable in co-creating innovative solutions to overcome them.

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Pathways to a Better Future: Manitoba Renews its Commitment to Address Poverty

On March 4, 2019, The Manitoba government released its latest poverty reduction strategy, Pathways to a Better Future: Manitoba’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. The province’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Act requires the province to implement a poverty reduction and social inclusion strategy, and to review and update the strategy every five years. The new strategy is an 84-page document that includes significant enhancements to the government’s previous 12-page strategy, entitled All Aboard.

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Identifying Everyone’s Stake: Cause & Effect Exercises

Last month, Cities Reducing Poverty members were introduced to facilitating Cause and Effect exercises by Gary Vipond, CEO of United Way Sault Ste. Marie and Algoma District. This blog provides an overview on what we learned as prospective facilitators.

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Building A Neighbourhood Strategy From The Outside In

As Cities grow, populations change and become more diverse, new neighbourhoods are built, and older neighbourhoods are being intensified. So, how do you deepen the sense of community? This is the question that the City of Waterloo’s was tasked with when they started to develop their neighbourhood strategy.  The City wanted to build a strategy to help define how to support neighbourhoods, facilitate continued growth, and support community members to be empowered to create strong neighbourhoods.

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Cities Reducing Poverty Policy Digest: March 2019

This is the March 2019 edition of the Cities Reducing Poverty Policy Digest, which aims to provide you with timely poverty-related policy updates and resources from across Canada.

Key highlights include significant federal and provincial achievements in poverty reduction based on data released by Statistics Canada from the 2017 Canadian Income Survey, Manitoba’s renewed poverty reduction strategy, and British Columbia’s 2019 budget investments for poverty reduction.

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Research on the Benefits of Social Connection

The GenWell Project, a global human connection movement, is on a mission to make the world a happier and healthier place by reminding people about the importance of face to face human connection and inspiring them to take action and get connected.

The research on the benefits of social connection is clearer than ever before. Spending time with others face to face can reduce anxiety and depression, increase empathy, compassion and resilience and can even make us live longer. Maybe even more importantly in our daily routines, social connection is the single largest indicator of happiness in our lives. For some this may not be news, but for all of us the importance and the clarity of the message likely is.

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