The Income Security Advocacy Centre released a new policy report In Their Own Words: The State of Social Assistance in Ontario. Read the full report here.
Join us on Thursday June 25, from 10:30 to 12 pm, for the launch of the Income Security Advocacy Centre’s new report, In Their Own Words: The State of Social Assistance in Ontario, including a community discussion about the findings AND how to turn this data into action!
The event will be hosted and moderated by ISAC’s Community Organizer, Claudia Calabro.
If you haven’t had a chance to read the report but are curious about the findings, or, you want to hear about how we can use the info in the report to push forward advocacy on social assistance and workers’ rights issues, this is the event for you.
Note: This event will likely not be recorded, so please register: http://bit.ly/3Sm0X9D
The Bruce Grey Poverty Task Force Coordinator Jill Umbach joined Tamarack Institute’s 10 Lived/Living Experience Advisory Committee in 2018 as part of the Vibrant Communities‘ multi-sectoral poverty reduction work. Since 2013, members of our Community Voices have been working with the Poverty Task Force as an advisory committee made up of people with “grounded expertise”. People with grounded expertise deeply understand the realities of poverty in Bruce and Grey Counties. Their stories and experiences serve as powerful tools for building compassion and for disrupting and clarifying a community’s understanding of its roots causes and scope.
Informed by the 10 Lived/Living Experience Advisory Committee and interviews with our Community Voices a Guide has been written to support poverty-reduction groups to meaningfully engage people with lived/living experience. It celebrates the potential that can be unlocked when these individuals are included and empowered to drive anti-poverty work.
10 – Engaging People with Lived/Living Experienceincludes:
10 really good ideas for engaging people with lived/living experience;
10 stories that inspire (including #10 story of our Community Voices)
10 useful resources;
10 ways to get started.
The Guide highlights leading practices, inspires new thinking, and serves as a reminder of how critical engagement of people with lived/living experience in poverty reduction truly is.
Take Your Learning Further (links to resources from Section 4):
Not everyone experiences life the same way. We live in the same environment with the same expectations but different realities. The Bruce Grey Poverty Task Force supports people with grounded expertise to participate in solving our community problems. Members of our Community Voices are graduates from the Getting Ahead program.
In 2018, we completed 4 Getting Ahead sessions in Hanover, Kincardine, Owen Sound and Walkerton with a total of 222 graduates. Getting Ahead is a 15 session (3 hours/session), 8 week program designed to help people create their own path for making a stable, secure life for themselves and their family.
A Getting Ahead Program Evaluation (Wahler, 2015) found that “the program … facilitates positive changes in poverty-related knowledge, perceived stress, mental health and well-being; social support, self-efficacy, hope; and goal directed behavior and planning amongst participants.” Read the full study at GA-Program-Evaluation-Results_21 Oct 2015. Four sessions are scheduled in 2019 in Markdale, Wiarton, Port Elgin and Owen Sound funded by Grey County and Bruce County.
In 2018, a new Building Emotional Resources course for Getting Ahead graduates was piloted. The Pilot has been picked up to run for 12 weeks in Hanover in March 2019.
This program is for people who have lost their way at some point and want to get ‘themselves’ back. Getting Ahead graduates use a workbook full of exercises that invite them to reflect on their life and the way they deal with problems, with losses, and with their emotions.
Taking a constructive approach, participants increase their awareness, build more resources and become stronger as they move from one exercise to the next. Read more in Emilia O’Neill-Baker’s article “Build Emotional Resources to Own More of Yourself”.
Bridges Out of Poverty promotes an active partnership between people of different economic backgrounds – based on mutual respect – to address poverty in a systematic way. Since 2015, the Bridges Action Group has been coordinating training with community groups on the Bridges Out of Poverty concepts. In 2018, we provided 2 trainings (39 people) and offered many awareness sessions in Grey County.
The next component of the Bridges Out of Poverty program is the formation of Circles™. Circles™ is a supportive, intentional, reciprocal, befriending relationship comprised of a Getting Ahead graduate and their family who are moving out of poverty (Circle Leader) and 2 to 4 community-based middle class people (Allies) willing to befriend the family and support their way out of poverty.
Since 2017, the Bridges Action Group has been working on a Circles™ design. We have been meeting with Circles Canada and organizations in Ontario implementing various models while determining various cost factors. In 2018, the YMCA coordinated a Poverty Simulation with Circles Sarnia-Lambton and Getting Ahead graduates for professionals in Elmwood. And we hosted a Circles Information Session in Hanover in 2018. We continue to work on a design and funding for the model in 2019.
Housing is a basic need and is internationally recognized as a human right. Housing forms the foundation for our homes, neighbourhoods and communities.
Housing provides shelter, security, a space in which family life can happen and where children grow up and thrive. Yet, for many people, their housing jeopardizes their health and well-being.
The unfit conditions in housing, disproportionately experienced by people living in low income or other marginalizing circumstances negatively affect people’s physical and mental health. Multiple chronic diseases and acute effects, including asthma, respiratory conditions, allergies, chemical sensitivities, as well as cardiovascular disease and its numerous risk factors can be exacerbated or, in some cases caused, by poverty, stress, and living in unhealthy conditions.
In 2018, a new 