Significant efforts are underway to more fully understand poverty throughout the qathet region.
Currently, a community survey is underway to solicit feedback from residents. It is available at participatepr.ca.
This information will provide a community snapshot that will provide data for a committee being formed to tackle poverty reduction and to develop a strategy. The survey, which is open until April 15, has resulted in nearly 300 responses, with the bulk of respondents being female. Organizers are hoping for some more male participation.
Organizers want people with living experience with poverty, especially, to respond to the online survey. This will help provide good data for future research.
City of Powell River, qathet Regional District and Tla’amin Nation have partnered to complete the qathet regional poverty reduction strategy as part of the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) poverty reduction planning and action program. This project is in partnership with Lift Community Services and First Credit Union.
Tara Chernoff, First Credit Union vice-president of community and marketing, said she and Stuart Clark, executive director of Lift Community Services, started having conversations about the matter of poverty in the region back in 2018.
“First Credit Union, like many of our local organizations, is interested in poverty reduction,” said Chernoff. “When Stuart approached us to talk about working together, we agreed that this would be a community effort. At that time, a social planner had been hired for the region so it was perfect timing to start a conversation that involved the three governments.”
Clark said Lift Community Services had been involved in poverty reduction work and he had connected with Chernoff about some things First Credit Union was interested in. A conference was being put on by the Tamarack Institute, which is involved in poverty issues across Canada, and the institute has developed a network of cities trying to reduce poverty, he added.
Clark said he encouraged a local contingent to go to the conference in Vancouver to get a sense of what was going on with poverty reduction.
“It was then we learned that we were behind,” said Clark.
He said when he returned to Powell River, he had a meeting with Chernoff and they agreed to push this and encourage the three local governments to develop a poverty reduction strategy. They reached out to the regional social planner and the process started to gain momentum.
According to Clark, the poverty reduction strategy is not about building a plan, it’s about building momentum for systemic change.
“To do that, you really have to start talking to your community and listening to your community, collecting data and building a network of people who care,” said Clark. “We are at the early stages of this still but managed to get $50,000 from the UBCM to help us with the community engagement part.”
Clark said it was decided to put together an advisory committee so there was a base of people to get advice from. He said the committee started out as a small group and a consultant was hired to put together a background report.
Advisory committee to grow
Now that the money has come through from UBCM, a much more robust community engagement process has been initiated and the committee is going to grow to between 30 and 40 representatives of a broad section of the community. The first meeting of the enlarged group will be April 27. There is a cross-section of representatives from business, government, non-profits and people with experience of poverty, according to Clark.
Once the committee has received results from the community survey, and initiates community engagement, it can be used to create some action items, said Clark.
“We’re going to zero in on some targets,” he added. “If there is a certain group of people where we can make a big difference, we will focus on helping them get out of poverty. We’ll see if we can move the needle on how many people are living in poverty in this community.
“We have to remember that this is systemic. There are no band-aids anymore. We are not helping the poor here; we are actually trying to address the systemic issues keeping people in poverty.”
Clark said it’s a big task and that’s why so many voices are needed, and so many people are on the advisory committee.
Chernoff said it’s important to reach out to all different sectors of the community.
“This isn’t just a government solution, a community organization solution or a business solution, this is a complex problem, which is why it hasn’t been solved yet,” said Chernoff. “It’s going to take all of us to be part of the solution.”
Clark said being plugged into the community network through the Tamarack Institute, he’s learned that some communities have had incredible success in dealing with poverty. He said it’s imperative to listen to people in the community in poverty to understand their experience and learn what the barriers are before they can actually be removed.
“It will be hard work but we’re pretty optimistic,” said Clark.
Financial health is imperative
Chernoff said for First Credit Union, a financially healthy community is an imperative.
“That means we have a huge responsibility to bring down any barriers, stigma and discrimination that exists that helps perpetuate these cycles of poverty,” said Chernoff. “It completely makes sense for us and for the business community to be involved in a poverty reduction strategy. We all want the same thing. We love our community and we want it to be healthy and vibrant. You can’t have that when 25 per cent of children live in poverty.”
She added that in this region, children in single-parent families are three times more likely to live in poverty than those with two parents, and one in six seniors are living in poverty.
“This is unacceptable,” said Chernoff. “We can’t have a vibrant healthy community when so many people are struggling.
“It’s not just a government or community organization problem, it’s an everybody problem. If systemic changes are to take place, it will take all of us working together.”
