How Collective Impact can support climate transitions in communities: Lessons from Communities Ending Poverty
Date: Wednesday, November 17, 2021 | 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. ET
Speakers: Paul Born, Cathy Wright, Shannon Franssen, Teika Newton
Tamarack’s Communities Ending Poverty (CEP) network supports 89 members representing 330 communities across Canada in their efforts to end poverty. Through a collective impact approach, these communities have developed multi-sector leadership roundtables, engaged people with lived/living experiences of poverty and other diverse community members, and developed and implemented common visions and plans. Their efforts have contributed to significant reductions in poverty rates nationwide. This webinar explores what potential the CEP model has for the climate transition space, and how communities can use collective impact to accelerate just local transitions.
Register for this webinar below. All registrants will receive a full recording of the webinar, a copy of the slides, and a collection of links and resources.
Speakers
Paul Born Co-CEO, Tamarack Institute
Paul Born is a global leader and an award-winning author on issues of community. His knowledge about Collective Impact and Community Engagement is extensive. Paul grew up as the son of refugees that worked together to survive and then thrive. This experience is what made him deeply curious about and engaged in ideas that cause people to work together for the common good.
Paul is the Co-founder and Co-CEO of Tamarack Institute, a 35,000-member learning community, and the Founder and Director of Vibrant Communities, a Collective Impact movement including Cities Reducing Poverty, Cities Deepening Community, Communities Building Youth Futures and Community Climate Transitions. A large-scale community change facilitator, Paul is the author of four books including two Canadian best sellers. He is a global faculty member of the Asset Based Community Development Institute (ABCD) and a senior fellow of Ashoka, the world’s largest network of social innovators. Paul was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2019.
Cathy Wright Former Executive Director of Living SJ
Cathy Wright is a long-time catalyst for poverty reduction efforts in Saint John, New Brunswick. Prior to moving into semi-retirement, she served as executive director of Living SJ, a dynamic network of leaders from business, government, non-profits and low-income neighbourhoods, focused on ending generational poverty. She supported the development of this growing network as it applied a collective impact approach to four game-changing priorities - education, health, employment and neighbourhoods - impacting the lives of individuals and families living in poverty.
As both a professional and a volunteer, Cathy has contributed to changing social issues at the local, provincial and national levels. Her work, primarily in the non-profit sector in poverty reduction, social planning, and adult literacy, is guided by the necessity of diverse partners working and learning together.
Cathy is a recipient of the 2017 Vibrant Communities Canada Legacy Award.
Shannon Franssen Executive Director, Climate Action Network - Réseau action climat (CAN-Rac) Canada
Shannon Franssen has been working in the community movement in Ontario and Quebec for over 25 years. She is an experienced non-profit administrator, an accomplished facilitator and an innovative campaigner, with a passion for coalition-building, strategic planning and leading discussions that result in collective action.
Since 2010, she has led Solidarité Saint-Henri, a Community Development Corporation in Montreal that brings together local stakeholders and government to build a more sustainable and socially just community. Ms. Franssen is a second-generation settler and lives with her family in Tiohtià:ke on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) Nation lands known as Montreal.
Teika Newton Managing Director, Climate Action Network - Réseau action climat (CAN-Rac) Canada
Teika began working with CAN-Rac in 2017 as the coordinator for ClimaCon, continued as the Membership Campaign Coordinator and subsequently the Membership and Domestic Policy Manager, and now works as Managing Director. Teika is thrilled to be able to indulge her passion for meeting people, learning their stories and building relationships in support of lasting, meaningful climate action. Teika lives in Kenora, ON, a small town on the shores of big, beautiful Lake of the Woods in the heart of Treaty 3 territory. She has spent the past decade working on community development projects to enhance social, environmental and economic sustainability in Treaty 3. The former founding executive director of Transition Initiative Kenora, Teika is also a very active member of the International Joint Commission’s regional watershed board, and devotes a lot of volunteer time to reconciliation and decolonization efforts in Kenora. In her spare time, she and her husband and their two kids are usually adventuring by ski, paddle, cycle or foot in the wilderness around their off-grid home.