The Latest

Defying ‘Generational’ Gravity

In one of my volunteer roles, I co-chair LivingSJ—a collective impact movement in Saint John with a goal to end generational poverty. What many may not realize is that generational poverty is a much more stubborn and complex problem to solve than situational or temporary poverty. When a person or family with a job/house/car/etc… gets into dire straits after suffering a catastrophic financial event, they are often privileged to have friends and family with assets to lean on temporarily, with their gravity typically pulling them upward towards recovering to their norm. However, with generational poverty, the gravitational pull is often reversed, continually holding people down, generation after generation, because in many respects the knowledge of what heights can be reached gets lost to the collective conscience.

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Building Readiness to Tackle Complexity:  Problem Identification and Scoping

The Tamarack Institute and the Ontario Trillium Foundation are hosting a webinar series on the theme of Transforming Communities. We all know that transforming communities is challenging work. It can be made even more difficult when those undertaking the transforming process do not understand or focus on readiness as a pre-condition for their work.

Understanding community readiness is about due diligence and intentionality. The second webinar in the transforming communities’ series focused on problem identification and scoping. You can access the webinar recording here. You can also access a copy of the slidedeck here.

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Why don’t we benefit from Societal Innovations as Readily as Technological Innovations?

Since 1785 there have been 5 waves with respect to our technological knowledge. Each wave doubled the knowledge we had previously accumulated. We are now in the 6th wave. This technological knowledge produced technological innovations such as steam engines, light bulbs, cars, planes, computers, smartphones, etc. We can safely conclude that we have been very successful in using our technological knowledge to create technological innovations. 

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A Light in the Window

In the deep darkness of a winter night, there are lights in windows of homes across Copenhagen. 

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Strength in numbers: Targeting labour force participation to improve prosperity in Ontario

In its 16th Annual Report, Strength in numbers: Targeting labour force participation to improve prosperity in Ontario, Ontario’s Panel on Economic Growth & Prosperity analyzes Ontario's GDP per capita compared to ten similar peer jurisdictions (Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, the Netherlands, Tennessee, Sweden, Michigan, Australia, British Columbia, and Québec) and analyzes the labour force participation rate of youth, women, older workers, and Indigenous Peoples in Ontario.

The analysis reveals that Ontario continues to experience a ‘prosperity gap’ – GDP per capita is $5,600 below its peer jurisdictions.

Removing the barriers faced by these four groups has the potential to close Ontario's prosperity gap and could add $54.0 billion to the economy.

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Lower Columbia Region Releases Road Map to Poverty Reduction

British Columbia is one of the most prosperous provinces in Canada, yet poverty remains a serious issue in many communities. According to a new report released today, key indicators of poverty remain startlingly high in the Lower Columbia Region (LCR) of BC’s West Kootenay. For example, the four local foodbanks support approximately 5,000 visits per year. Additionally 1,600 households – 1 in 5 in the region – are in housing need, and in 2013, the last year for which there is reliable data, 990 children were living in poverty.

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