Description
Saint John, New Brunswick, is celebrating 20 years of community-wide poverty reduction efforts, an increase in community resilience, and a 69% reduction in poverty.
In the new case study, Saint John Stronger Together, author and former Vice President of Caledon Institute, Sherri Torjman, helps tell the story of a community that came together to end generational poverty. The story shares what the community has achieved in two decades and the lessons they learned along the way.
One of the topics Torjman explores is community's adoption of priority actions clustered into four pillars: community empowerment, learning, and economic and social inclusion.
This webinar dives into one of the collective's big successes: Closing the Education-Achievement Gap.
This collective impact initiative increased Grade 3 literacy rates of students in low-income schools to match the provincial district average.
The success of their collaboration reveals several lessons in partnership. Such as:
The social role of businesses and the education sector in poverty reduction
The importance of tracking and sharing medium-term results
A feasible scope and scale at the community-level
Persistent incrementalism - turning pilot programs into policy change
Join the webinar with author, Sherri Torjman and community organizers from Saint John, New Brunswick to explore their process, partnerships, innovations and learnings.
Further Reading:
Speakers
Sherri Torjman, Author, Saint John Stronger Together
Sherri Torjman is the writer who accepted the task of synthesizing Saint John’s journey into a short, impactful and readable case study titled Saint John Stronger Together.
Sherri was Vice President of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy for 25 years and is currently a social policy consultant. She has made invaluable contributions to social policy in Canada through her analysis, writing and public speaking on child benefits, welfare reform, disability income and supports, home care, caregiver needs and community-based poverty reduction.
Monica Chaperlin, Coordinator, Business Community Anti-Poverty Initiative
Monica’s passion is learning the ways and means to improve the social foundations that cause communities to thrive. She is the Coordinator of the Business Community Anti-Poverty Initiative (BCAPI), an organization of business leaders who collaborate with community and government to end generational poverty in Saint John, N.B. Helping every child succeed, from cradle to career, is BCAPI’s primary focus.
Prior to BCAPI, Monica worked inside government and community organizations to help drive social innovations in municipal services, community health, housing and urban planning.
Source: Register Here