The Latest

How the Lens of Movement Building Can Strengthen Community Engagement

A common thread throughout my career has been a focus on building support and commitment for change on a variety of social issues.  I have learned that effective engagement rarely happens by accident.  More often, it results from deliberate strategies that include: making a clear and compelling case for change; continually communicating core messages through different channels to reach several audiences; and, offering simple ways for people to take action to show their support.  Occasionally, something magical would happen and our engagement campaigns sparked a groundswell of support that ignited passion and gave our campaign a life of its own.  Somehow we had done more than implement an effective engagement strategy, we had sparked a movement. 

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My Favourite Community Change Resources

Many of us working in community change efforts are continually searching for new resources and tools to help facilitate effective community engagement and community change processes.  Over the last several weeks, some of my favourite twitter leads have shared their lists of sites that they regularly visit for tools and resources. 

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Kitchener’s Love My Hood

The City of Kitchener recently received an award for planning excellence from the Canadian Institute of Planners. Kitchener’s Love My Hood strategy was awarded the prize for New and Emerging Planning initiatives for its innovative and unique methodology - providing small groups of residents the tools and permission to work with their community to formulate an action plan and make decisions.

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The State of Cities Reducing Poverty

How has the Vibrant Communities – Cities Reducing Poverty (VC – CRP) network contributed to poverty reduction in Canada? In seeking to answer this central question, the State of Cities Reducing Poverty paper highlights the network’s numerous and varied impacts.

As the paper documents, the VC – CRP multi-sector model has helped facilitate community leadership on poverty, including among mayors and municipal councils, the business community, and people with lived and living experience of poverty. The network has also led and contributed to significant policy and systems changes in domains such as living wage, transportation, housing, and financial empowerment.

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Cities Reducing Poverty Policy Digest: September 2018

This is the September 2018 edition of the Cities Reducing Poverty Policy Digest which aims to provide timely poverty-related policy updates and resources from across Canada.

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A Common Purpose

In 2016, an international group of partnership broker trainers convened in Wales to reflect on the key principles involved in partnership processes. The gathering followed a 20 year journey initiated by Ros Tennyson and Michael Warner who wanted to promote professionalism and integrity in cross-sector partnering.

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