November took me to Australia and New Zealand to meet with colleagues working on community change, community-led development and Collective Impact. I was a keynote speaker and workshop presenter at ChangeFest, a gathering of 500 Collective Impact practitioners in Logan, Queensland.
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At the end of November, the Tamarack Institute was joined by local partners in Kitchener-Waterloo to announce our new 4-year, $2 million partnership with Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC). The event was hosted with the full Tamarack family with kind words from Marcus Shantz, the president of Conrad Grebel University College, and Karen Redman, the incoming chair of the Region of Waterloo. It was a great opportunity to reflect on our work and to hear from our Co-CEOs, Paul Born and Liz Weaver, about what this new partnership will mean for how Tamarack supports community leaders.
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We are all familiar with the old adage that “it takes a community to raise a child”, but translating that wisdom into high-impact action is anything but simple. In particular, developing innovative and effective strategies to address the needs of the growing percentage of youth who are neither in school nor at work is an area of specific focus for many communities throughout North America. That is why we are fortunate to have to have examples such as Canada’s Pathways to Education and a new research brief, Building Partnerships: In Support of Where, When, and How Learning Happens published by the Aspen Institute, to offer a richer understanding of the interconnected factors that enable young people to thrive and demonstrate that by working together collaboratively across sectors, communities can achieve high-impact results that ensure promising futures for all youth.
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Access to fresh, affordable nutritious food is an important aspect of many local poverty reduction strategies. In Sault Ste. Marie, the Poverty Reduction Roundtable is addressing this pillar through a food resource centre called Harvest Algoma. Harvest Algoma was established by United Way Sault Ste. Marie & Algoma District, and the United Way continues to operate the facility.
The food resource distribution centre is creating a more efficient local food system, and has:
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On September 6, 2018, the Roundtable on Poverty Reduction for the Montreal Borough of Côte-des-neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Graçe submitted its recommendations to the Borough Council on how it could deploy its political, social and economic capital to reduce poverty within its boundaries.
The Roundtable was launched by former Borough Mayor, Russell Copeman, in early 2017 who was convinced the best way to develop a local plan was to follow Tamarack’s tried and true engagement process. After her election in late 2017, new Borough Mayor Sue Montgomery gave her blessing to the Roundtable members to conclude their work with caveat that an accent be put on “actionable” recommendations for poverty reduction by the Borough Council.
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This is the November 2018 edition of the Cities Reducing Poverty Policy Digest, which aims to provide you with timely poverty-related policy updates and resources from across Canada.
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