P.G. In Pilot Project to Reduce Poverty
Prince George, B.C.- Prince George is one of seven communities selected for a pilot project aimed at helping families chart their own path out of poverty.
Prince George, along with Cranbrook, Port Hardy, Surrey, New Westminster,Stewart and Kamloops have been identified as the first to pilot community poverty-reduction strategies. These communities were recommended by the UBCM to reflect a mix of metro, urban, rural and remote communities across B.C.
"Communities are different. Families are different. That is the essence of this project that promotes collaboration and sharing new, innovative ideas that recognize each community and each family has distinctive needs and resources," said Mary McNeil, Minister of Children and Family Development. "The goal is to provide low-income families with tailor-made springboards out of poverty by focusing on their strengths – not just their needs."
The ministry is appointing seven community poverty strategy consultants to forge partnerships with local governments, community organizations and local businesses. The consultants will co-ordinate and lead community teams in developing action plans that address the needs of families living in poverty. Action plans with measurable targets will be developed over the summer with implementation scheduled for September 2012.
The strategies will initially focus on families with children living in poverty and will use existing resources in each community. The strategies will be developed through feedback from town hall meetings, community discussions and conversations with low-income families and individuals vulnerable to poverty.
Community teams will take responsibility for the day-to-day implementation of the project. The teams will work directly with families to understand their individual needs, connect them with supports and to develop personalized paths out of poverty designed by families themselves.
Once the project has been implemented in the first seven communities, it will be evaluated and expanded to include 20 more communities each year for the next two years.
Comments
This is a good idea. I am a person that is vulnerable to becoming impoverished. My taxes are increasing at a rate that’s unsustainable. I would like to suggest to our Mayor and Council that if they could stop borrowing money for new police stations and look into other locations like schools which have been closed. That alone would help to free up some money to repave sone streets. Also I am sure that we could forego the building of a Kin 1 center until we have cought up on the infastructure of the city that would free up money for infastructure. Also I would also suggest with all due respect that we could do without the 2015 Winter Games. This would also free up money to care for the badly needed infastructure repairs of our city. There are a number of projects that we didn’t need as a city that have already cost the city a staggering amount of money. This is money that would bed better spent at prev enting poverty. By the way I don’t see ball diamonds and tennis courts where the less privileged can enjoy and become more physicaly and socialy active. I could write a book just for you Mrs. Mayor and Council on better ways of spending tax payers dollars.
Strategy + Paid consultants + Town hall Meetings + collaboration + action Plans + the use of existing resources = No new funding to really address the issue and after almost 12 years in Government they are still Clueless as to why BC has such a high poverty rate.
I’m not poor. I’m just broke all of the time.
Get rid of the needle van and use the money to ensure all kids go to school with lunch. Feed the young minds so they can learn better, and move on to post secondary education.
GET RID OF THE NEEDLE VAN, that would be great. We have lots of working poor out there they should be also helped.
Stop having kids if you can’t afford to raise them? Just a thought.
There’ll always be a high poverty rate wherever there’s a government in office that doesn’t know the difference between inflation and prosperity. The BC Liberals are such a government.
It’s financially inevitable ~ and poverty in this country is purely financial. Unlike in some other lands, where there is an actual scarcity of the necessities of life, and/or the physical means to procure them, the poverty here is one in the midst of plenty.
Scarcity here is artificially induced, by keeping ‘money’, or more correctly, ‘purchasing power’, scarce. It may be mal-distributed, but to no great extent are the poor here poor because the rich are rich.
And no RE-distribution of existing ‘money’ will cure it ~ something that’s continually lost on those of the socialist persuasion. But then they’d sooner busy themselves representing poverty perpetually, and adding to their constituency, than taking meaningful steps to abolish it.
You can’t ever make a sufficiency of anything by RE-distributing an insufficiency.
You have to Produce and DISTRIBUTE more of what is scarce in a quantity that overcomes the scarcity.
And what is scarce is ‘money’ itself, relative to the total amount of ‘price values’ of goods and services for sale expressed in ‘money’.
There needs to be a proper nexus between the two. Without that, every industrial economy will continue to fall far short of the physical potential it holds to eliminate poverty and produce a physical prosperity for all.
Not an equality, for such is neither possible nor desirable, but a physical adequacy commensurate with what our productive system can deliver, so that everyone first has enough to meet their basic needs, (and to a much higher standard than they already are financially restricted, if the actual, physical means to do so are at hand and under-utilised), and let individual initiative take over from there. It was once said that, “…the poor will always be with us”. That may be so, but far better it be the poor who choose to be that way, than the growing number that are finding no practical alternative.
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