The Latest

Exploring a Community Youth Organization’s Rapid Response to the Pandemic

Founded in 1970, Head & Hands is a community health organization servicing Montreal’s west end community youth. It began with a mission to provide medical, legal and social services to Montreal’s youth and has since grown into a landmark community organization providing “services that include free weekly drop-in medical clinics, legal information and consultations, counselling, a young parents’ program, youth drop-in, tutoring, street workers, and the Sense Project peer-based sex ed in high schools.”

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Cities Reducing Poverty Responds to COVID-19

Through the COVID-19 crisis, Vibrant Communities – Cities Reducing Poverty (VC–CRP) has responded to meet urgent community needs through a wide variety of mechanisms and partnerships. Our 81 members, representing 328 communities, have demonstrated creativity, commitment, and compassion as they support their communities’ most vulnerable.

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Lessons in Coping from Calgarians in Chronic Poverty

When Calgary’s poverty reduction strategy, Enough for All,was developed, it would have been hard to imagine a city where we are quite seriously considering that phrase as it relates to our current crisis, to ourselves and to our families. Is there enough for all of us? Is there enough for me? The greatest irony of our current predicament is that people in our city who have been living in chronic poverty have a lot to teach us about how to handle our new normal. They have been living it for years.

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Food as a Basic Necessity Now More than Ever

The supermarket shop is one of a few outings we as a society are permitted to do. If we are healthy and able, if shopping was once enjoyable, the guilt some may feel for venturing out along with the rules one must follow can impose an anxiety-inducing experience, ripping what little pleasure we might hope to get from perusing the isles while dreaming up marvellous meals to create with all the time at home. Nevertheless, it is a privilege and we are grateful for it and to all those who keep this convenience going. But not everyone has access to this privilege.

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5 Ways Cities Reducing Poverty Members are Responding to the COVID-19 Crisis

Cities Reducing Poverty collaboratives have worked for years to build local relationships that  support residents and neighbourhoods to thrive. These efforts have strengthened the social infrastructure communities need to be resilient and quickly organize in an emergency situation, such as COVID-19.

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Leveraging COVID-19 to Create a More Resilient Community

The impact of COVID-19 has been swift and intense, and has stopped the world-as-we-know-it in its tracks seemingly overnight. Unnerving as it may be, perhaps a shock like this is just what was needed for us to pause and truly give thought to what isn’t working, and what has to change. For months now, the world has listened (and agreed with) Greta Thunburg as she urged us change our relationship with this earth...but in practical terms nothing much changed. Now, everything is changed. So if the dark cloud of crisis were to have a silver lining, perhaps it is that we no longer have a choice but to look at how we can do things differently – for the time being and for the foreseeable future; and a big part of moving forward can be achieved by working together to achieve our common goals.

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