I’ve been following the Poverty Reduction Strategy’s work since the fall. Is the project done? What are the results?
Thanks for following up about this. The findings from the PRS project are in. It comes in the form of a 44-page report. The recommendations for action on poverty reduction for the Lower Sunshine Coast are clearly laid out in the report. They are divided into areas such as housing, child care, and transportation, just to name a few, as well as recommending the creation of a “Social Planning Council,” to combat the way in which many services get stuck working in silos rather than speaking to each other.
The full report – A Strategic Framework for Action on Poverty Reduction – is available to download on our Resource Centre website. You can also download shorter digests of the document too, the executive summary and Poverty Reduction Lens.
Download and read the findings here: resourcecentre.ca/our-projects/poverty-reduction-strategy.
For those who would like to find out more and read the findings in hard copy, we have these on hand at our Sechelt office. This includes the full report as well as the executive summary/poverty reduction lens documents, which are much shorter. Both the Sechelt and Gibsons libraries have just received a few copies for reference, so feel free to inquire there too. If your organization or group would benefit from having a copy to work from, please let us know.
As this report states, one of the early recommendations from the second phase of the PRS project was to “address the invisibility of poverty by developing communication strategies to increase community awareness and dialogue.” I encourage all of you to commit to reading this report to get a sense of what is really happening when it comes to poverty on the Lower Sunshine Coast.
Did you know that one in four kids on the Coast lives in poverty? Or, that 300 seniors are on the waitlist for 150 senior housing units? Through real stories and data, this report highlights what many in the community already know – poverty cannot always be recognized from the outside. It is your neighbour, your child’s classmate, and your friend. We challenge you, your family, your organization to be part of the solution and help tackle poverty on the Coast.
Angie Theilmann is an information and referral specialist at the Sunshine Coast Resource Centre, your community information hub. Do you have a question? Just Ask Angie! Email: [email protected].
