The Latest

How Do We Know We are Making a Difference in Our Neighbourhood Work?

I was speaking with Howard Lawrence from Abundant Community Edmonton about their work around neighbourhood development and we got talking about making a difference in our community and how do we know if anyone is better off because of the changes/activities that have been implemented.  How do we measure change in our neighbourhood work?  Howard told me about a tool called the Sense of Community Index that is used in the social science area to determine sense of community. 

Read More

Calgary's Enough for All: Canada's First Financial Empowerment Model

Financial vulnerability affects many people in Calgary. Wages are not keeping up with the rapidly increasing cost of living, and most people living below the poverty line belong to households in which at least one person is working. Many people are living above the poverty line, yet still experience financial vulnerability due to low levels of savings and high levels of debt.

Read More

Community Benefits Summit Highlights Opportunity for More Inclusive Prosperity

Two types of social wealth building initiatives are on the rise: Community Benefit Agreements (CBA) and Social Procurement. Scotland, Los Angeles, the Vancouver Olympics, and even the 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games/Parapan Am Games were amongst the first to adopt CBA's and social procurement adoption. In fact, Ontario is the first Canadian jurisdiction to pass legislation on CBAs. Ontario’s Bill 6, the Infrastructure for Jobs and Prosperity Act, received Royal Ascent in 2015 and the regulations to support this policy are currently in development.

Read More

Connecting Ideas to Practice: Tamarack on the Global Stage

The international Association of Community Development (IACD) is a global network of community change leaders who are seeking to build the capacity of communities to realize greater social and economic equality, environmental protection and political democracy. Over its 15-year history, Tamarack has both contributed to and been influenced by the ideas of IACD thought leaders including Peter Drucker, John McKnight, and Cormac Russell.

In the most recent edition of the IACD Practice Insights, Tamarack contributed two articles which illustrate both the challenge and the opportunity of deep community engagement in co-creating change. Lisa Attygalle’s article on The Context Experts describes the value of citizens in sharing their expertise about navigating community systems. Context experts are people with lived experience of the situation, including children and youth. They are the people who experientially know about the issue and can share their expertise in how the issue impacts them and their livelihoods. Authentic community engagement purposefully including context experts in co-creating solutions.

Read More

Innovation Comes in all Sizes: Reflections from Three Days on the Lower North Shore of Quebec

It was early spring 2017 when a collective impact and community engagement capacity building gathering was held in La Tabatiere, Quebec. This tiny, isolated community of 499 residents hosted more than 100 colleagues from across the Lower North Shore region over three days, many arriving by snowmobiles and air as there are few roads that lead to the community in the winter.

The participants experienced a deep dive into four curriculum content areas including collaborative leadership, community engagement, community development and collective impact. The curriculum was designed to create a common language for all participants and to have them discover the great work that was already happening in the Region. In addition, the participants also learned about education and community-based success stories which were already driving innovation into the region.

Read More

Lessons from Toronto Foundation's Vital Signs Report: Towards a More Just City

The Toronto Foundation, a community foundation focused on pooling philanthropic resources to maximize community impact, released their 2017/18 vital signs report this month. This year’s report, Towards a More Just City, uses an equity lens to reveal the ways that quality of life can be impacted by neighbourhood, income, race, immigration status, gender, sexual identity and age in Toronto. The Toronto Foundation hopes that the equity lens, and the concerns that it highlights, provide a useful roadmap for government, the philanthropic sector, private sector and individual citizens to remove systemic barriers facing some populations in Toronto from full participation in the city.

Read More