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As Sherri Torjman of the Caledon Institute says, if any number of government departments, church agencies, and charities are inadequate to the task of reducing poverty, what can communities do? Plenty, she replies, though only in collaboration with these actors as well as the private sector. Poverty is too complex and multi-faceted an experience for any one agency or strategy to solve. How then does one create efficient strategies which involve so many partners? The following items from The CED Digital Bookshop offer a range of community-based approaches to fighting poverty. A click on any title will forward you to the Bookshop to place your order. (Most items cost under $10. Many are free.) Nothing here that fits the bill? There's plenty more. Drop us a line to let us know just what you're after. 1. Comprehensive Community Initiatives "Comprehensiveness" in our action against poverty may sound like a good idea. In practice, it is very difficult to make real. In addition to a diversity of skill and experience, make sure your steering committee has at hand a thorough analysis of the dilemma, and has formulated its own theory of how change will actually occur. 1. How Can Communities Reduce Poverty? Poverty is not merely a result of a lack of money or skills. The complexity of the problem requires action that is comprehensive and subject to local design and control. 2. Local Action to Fight Poverty There are many organizations apart from government and the private sector that can play a significant role in fighting local poverty. But such an agenda requires a very substantial transition from community-based organizations (CBOs). This booklet introduces a method by which groups can undertake sustained, effective measures to generate employment and income opportunities for disadvantaged fellow citizens. While any number of U.S. strategies for generating income and employment may be worth replicating, no one approach can address the diversity of marginal populations. Any structural attempt at poverty alleviation entails basic program and institutional development, including staff training and leadership development. 4. Is There an Alternative to Fringe Banking? Pawnshops, cheque cashers, and payday loaners are moving into Winnipeg's North End to "serve" a population too high on risk and short on cash for conventional bankers. A clutch of local organizations and citizens are exploring a sustainable, responsible alternative to fringe banking. In the 1990s, residents of Ontario's Waterloo Region began to get tire of poverty alleviation. How could they actually reduce poverty? Could they change the way the local economy worked, so it would offer more and better opportunities to more people? Opportunities 2000, they called their strategy. OP2000 rallied a remarkable range of citizens, businesses, charities, and government agencies to the cause of poverty reduction. But it did not do such a good job of providing strategic direction. The management practices introduced to remedy this weakness hold lessons for CED intermediaries everywhere. Vancouver's Downtown Eastside is one of the most impoverished places in Canada. There, the Potluck Café serves meals to some sick residents, trains and employs others, and offers market-rate catering to the general public. It's taken a major effort in for-profit catering to keep this agent of poverty reduction from going broke. In Toronto, the Lemon & Allspice Cookery is a business staffed by developmentally handicapped adults. Faith, love, and skill have been key to its survival. But so has been the Common Ground Co-operative, which lends form and system to the actions of supporters. 9. Job Dislocation and Retraining Canada Employment's efforts to retrain and relocate former employees of Sydney Steel failed. No client found long-term employment in the vocation for which they were trained. Action to ensure immediate and short-term survival is vital - but a strategy confined to that approach is futile. 10. The Human Resources Development Association While training has always been integral to the HRDA poverty reduction strategy, business development has been its outstanding feature. How did HRDA choose, create, and manage profitable businesses which would hire the people who were its clients? Where was the capital to come from? HRDA's solutions to these problems makes it an outstanding and stimulating model for all CED groups. Check out these other Hotlists! |
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