The Community Action Plan (CAP) on Poverty continues to gain support among different sectors in our community, including non-profit organizations, individual supporters, local governments and organizations from the private sector as well.

At their June 7th, 2012 meeting, City Councillors Alto and Helps provided the Governance and Priorities Committee of the City of Victoria with background information towards a motion regarding the CAP on Poverty.  After a brief discussion, a resolution to endorse the CAP on Poverty was passed unanimously (click here to see the minutes:  (https://victoria.civicweb.net/Documents/DocumentList.aspx?ID=38234).

Accent Inns Victoria was the first of the private sector organizations to endorse the CAP on Poverty, followed shortly by the West Shore Chamber of Commerce, which has pledge to promote community economic development and sustainable local enterprises, as part of the key area of work “Strong Local Economy”.

By the time of writing this update, there were 32 local organizations on our list of endorsers and 60 individuals. The number of concrete pledges is low, thought – only 17, which tells us we may need to revamp our communication and engagement strategy! What is interesting to note is that of the 17 pledges, 7 belong to the key area of food security; 3 focus on affordable housing, 2 in health care and access to justice respectively, and one pledge has been made to the key areas of livable incomes, strong local economy, and sustainable transportation. There are 3 key areas of work that have not received any pledges yet: child and youth care, education and training, and meaningful work.

This does not mean that there are some areas of work that are more important than others. Maybe the priorities right now are in addressing food security and affordable housing? Maybe our campaign needs to be more specific?

We want to know the answer to these questions, and to do that we are planning a “Learning Community of Practitioners Workshop” to take place in early November 2012. We want to review and evaluate the results of our campaign, learn about best practices in our community and in other jurisdictions, and generate a concrete number of priority collaborative initiatives that are achievable and will have an impact on reducing poverty in the short term. This will help us set up our priorities and move into the next stage of the Community Action Plan on Poverty.

Please visit our website http://www.communitycouncil.ca/ to read the CAP on Poverty and for information on how to support it.