Hello there,

Thank you for joining on last Thursday's webinar where Derek Cook spoke with Astrid Arumae about his new book, The ART of Hope: Healing the Wounded City. In The Art of Hope, Derek presents abundance, resilience, and trust as a path towards human flourishing and an alternative approach to addressing poverty that directly contrasts the experience of scarcity, vulnerability, and fear that characterizes poverty. 

ateAccess the Recording

You can now access the meeting recording (password: Z*%TzCg0) and slides.

Discussion Highlights

• Poverty is more than just a material condition where people lack things like money, food, and shelter, so they experience scarcity. It's also a social condition where people are cut off from others and from community so they experience vulnerability, and a spiritual condition where they lack meaning, purpose, and hope so they experience fear. 
• Two foundational myths drive modern society: the myth of scarcity which says that there are limited resources and unlimited needs, so anything that you have means less for me; and the myth of autonomy which says that pursuing our own self-interest is ideal. 
• The Scarcity Cycle: the perception of scarcity increases our sense of vulnerability, our awareness of that vulnerability produces a sense of powerlessness which results in fear, in the face of this fear we react with withdrawal or aggression which ultimately increases our scarcity.  
• The work of ending poverty is about healing the wounds of compromised relationships in an effort to heal ourselves. Breaking The Scarcity Cycle involves moving from scarcity to abundance, from vulnerability to resilience, from fear to trust. 
• Addressing poverty is about addressing the crisis of belonging - creating spaces where everyone can feel safe and find connection. Trust building work is really critical. 

Resources

• BOOK | The ART of Hope: Healing a Wounded City by Derek Cook
• BOOK | Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
• REPORT | Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community
• ARTICLE | Putting The United Back Into The United States: Author Cormac Russell On The 5 Things That Each Of Us Can Do To Help Unite Our Polarized Society
• GUIDE | Asset-Based Community Development at a Glance

Upcoming Opportunities

• WEBINAR (public) | Businesses Reducing Poverty | July 19 | 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. ET | Examine solutions to increase the financial inclusion of the working poor.  
• WEBINAR (private) | Boosting Financial Literacy: from poverty to possibility | July 27 | 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. ET | Discover how two financial empowerment initiatives are helping individuals living in poverty make sizeable gains. 

Thank you to everyone who joined us. 

Sincerely,

Orpah Cundangan (she/her) 

Learning Lead, Communities Ending Poverty

Vibrant Communities, Tamarack Institute

orpah@tamarackcommunity.ca