Author: joanne

Communities Respond – Report Released

The Communities Respond report was released by Poverty Free Saskatchewan today.

PFS Communities Respond – Highlights, Oct 15, 2012 final

PFS Communities Respond – Summary Report, Oct 15, 2012 final

Communities Respond documents the responses of participants in a series of public consultations held in 7 Saskatchewan locations in 2011 and 2012: North Battleford, Moose Jaw, Regina, Saskatoon, Tisdale, Nipawin and Melfort.

More than 170 participants attending the regional discussions said that it is time to move ahead on addressing poverty. People from the communities emphasized that many Saskatchewan residents are suffering greatly from the effects of poverty and this is preventing them from fully participating in our province.  Participants also identified many concrete positive actions that can be taken.

The Communities Respond report outlines the input received from the community discussions. These ideas will be used in future to develop an integrated and comprehensive poverty elimination plan. This plan will be built on the results of the community consultations, and a review of successful strategies in other provinces and in local Saskatchewan communities.

The document release is part of events in Saskatchewan and around the world honouring the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, which occurs on Oct 17.

Communities Respond – report on consultations

Poverty Free Saskatchewan : Press Conference

 Monday, October 15 at 10:00 a.m., Family Service Regina Boardroom, 2020 Halifax Street

 The press conference will mark the release of the Communities Respond research document which summarizes information from community consultations held across Saskatchewan in 2011 and 2012.

 The event is occurring at the start of Anti-Poverty Week, leading up to the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on October 17.

For more information, email PFS or call (306) 535-9570.

PFS General Mtg: Sept 19, 2012

 Poverty Free Saskatchewan : General Network Meeting

 Wednesday September 19, 10:00 a.m. to 12 noon

 In person at the Community Room, Regina United Way, 1440 Scarth Street and by teleconference around the province

You are cordially invited to the PFS General Meeting in September. This will be a great opportunity to hear about the results of our consultations and help guide the next steps towards poverty elimination. We want to hear from you about what is going on around the province and how we can work together.

 If you are interested in taking part, please e-mail us. https://povertyfreesask.ca/contact-us/

CWP subsidies for Congress

Please note that the following is from the Canada Without Poverty list-serve – subscribe for useful information about poverty initiatives in Canada.

“Canada Without Poverty has funds to support the registration of up to 30 Congress attendees in low income, for whom the registration fee would be a barrier.  For those who wish to request the registration subsidy, please send a message to info (at) cwp-csp.ca with the subject line: Request for Subsidy for Registration to the North American Basic Income Congress.  In the body of your message please also provide a brief statement of your interest in the Congress.

Please note that we ask all persons receiving the subsidy to participate in a pre-Congress conference call on April 27th and a post-Congress conference call on May 11th.  In you statement of interest please identify your availability for both conference calls, to take place at 2:00pm Eastern for 90 minutes.

Please apply for the subsidy for the early registration fee by April 12th.  Thank you.

Rob Rainer

Executive Director / Directeur executif

CANADA WITHOUT POVERTY / CANADA SANS PAUVRETÉ

Honorary Directors / Directeurs honoraires

Right (Très) Hon. Joe Clark, Hon. Louise Arbour, Hon. Monique Bégin, Hon. Ed Broadbent, Ovide Mercredi

Ottawa office / Bureau d’Ottawa: @UnderOneRoof, 251 Bank Street, 2nd Floor, Ottawa, ON K2P 1X3; (613) 789-0096 (1-800-810-1076)

Vancouver office / Bureau de Vancouver: (604) 628-0525

Basic Income Canada Canada Congress

11th North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress

Thursday May 3, 2012

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE)
University of Toronto
252 Bloor Street West
Toronto, Ontario

More information from: Basic Income Canada Network

http://biencanada.ca/content/11th-north-american-basic-income-guarantee-congress-schedule

Concurrent session leaders include a number of speakers from Saskatchewan.

The 11th North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress will take place May 3-5, 2012 at the University of Toronto, on the theme of Putting Equality Back on the Agenda: Basic Income and Other Approaches to Economic Security for All.

While Canada, the United States, and many other OECD countries have grown increasingly unequal in recent years, equality has not been on the political agenda. Yet evidence shows that income inequality is accompanied by a range of significant negative consequences. Putting Equality Back on the Agenda will examine this growing trend of inequality and consider the option of a basic income to reduce economic disparity.

Featured speakers will include:

Richard Wilkinson, Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham Medical School and co-author of The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better;

Charles Karelis, Research Professor of Philosophy at The George Washington University and Author of The Persistence of Poverty: Why the Economics of the Well-Off Can’t Help the Poor;

Erik Olin Wright, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin – Madison, author of Envisioning Real Utopias, and American Society: How it Actually Works;

Armine Yalnizyan, Senior Economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives;

John Rook, Chair of the National Council of Welfare and CEO of Potential Place Society;

Evelyn Forget, Professor, University of Manitoba Faculty of Medicine;

Trish Hennessey, Director of Strategic Issues for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives; and

Dan Meades, Director, Vibrant Communities Calgary.

The North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress is a joint Conference of the U.S. and Canadian Basic Income Guarantee Networks. It takes place in Canada and the United States on alternating years.  Scholars, service providers, policy makers, and others are invited to register. Presentations will address the following topics:

What are the costs of economic disparity (economic, social and political)?

What are the implications for pursuing (or not pursuing) basic income options?

What are possible models for generating revenue to sustain a basic income and what are their implications for economic disparity?

What are the practical issues for implementing a basic income policy and what are their implications for economic disparity?

What communication and engagement strategies are necessary to raise awareness about economic disparity and basic income in the public sphere?

You may register for the event at: http://www.regonline.com/Register/Checkin.aspx?EventID=1037653

Please note that we would like you to try to preregister for each session. Preregistration is simply to give the organizers an idea of the numbers we can roughly expect for each session.

If you do not have a credit card, then you can mail your registration contact information along with a check, payable to “Canada Without Poverty.” Please mail your payment before April 15th, 2012 to:

Attention: Kizzy Paris

Canada Without Poverty (CWP)

@UnderOneRoof

251 Bank Street, 2nd Floor

Ottawa, Ontario K2P 1X3

Tel: 613-789-0096 or 1-800-810-1076

DEADLINE FOR EARLY REGISTRATION FEE: APRIL 15th, 2012 Costs for per person registration are as follows, a registration fee ($3.95) and taxes will be added to your final amount:

$150 for Private, Corporate, University, and Government Registration $ 90 for Not-for-Profit Registration $ 40 for Low income, students, and seniors (No fee places available for persons living in poverty – contact CWP for details)

Registration after April 15th is $200 (Private/Corporate); $150 (Non-for-Profit); and $50 (Low Income, students, and seniors). Registration must occur prior to the event.

Famed economist: Income inequality bad for economy

An interview with Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist.

“Inequality is bad for growth, stability and efficiency.”

By Andrew Tangel, Staff Writer, THE RECORD, Friday, March 2, 2012

http://www.northjersey.com/news/business/141149483_Economist_says_wealth_gap_is_bad_for_growth.html?page=all

Word version Famed economist – Income Inequality Bad for the Economy

How We Cured “The Culture of Poverty,” Not Poverty Itself

 

How We Cured “The Culture of Poverty,” Not Poverty Itself

Mother Jones (This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.)

 http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/barbara-ehrenreich-what-causes-poverty

Word version How We Cured the Culture of Poverty

It’s been exactly 50 years since Americans, or at least the non-poor among them, “discovered” poverty, thanks to Michael Harrington’s engaging book The Other America [3]. If this discovery now seems a little overstated, like Columbus’s “discovery” of America, it was because the poor, according to Harrington, were so “hidden” and “invisible” that it took a crusading left-wing journalist to ferret them out.

[4]Harrington’s book jolted a nation that then prided itself on its classlessness and even fretted about the spirit-sapping effects of “too much affluence.” He estimated that one quarter of the population lived in poverty—inner-city blacks, Appalachian whites, farm workers, and elderly Americans among them. We could no longer boast, as President Nixon had done in his “kitchen debate” [5] with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow just three years earlier, about the splendors of American capitalism.

At the same time that it delivered its gut punch, The Other America also offered a view of poverty that seemed designed to comfort the already comfortable. The poor were different from the rest of us, it argued, radically different, and not just in the sense that they were deprived, disadvantaged, poorly housed, or poorly fed. They felt different, too, thought differently, and pursued lifestyles characterized by shortsightedness and intemperance. As Harrington wrote, “There is… a language of the poor, a psychology of the poor, a worldview of the poor. To be impoverished is to be an internal alien, to grow up in a culture that is radically different from the one that dominates the society.”

……..concluding paragraph …………

Fifty years later, a new discovery of poverty is long overdue. This time, we’ll have to take account not only of stereotypical Skid Row residents and Appalachians, but of foreclosed-upon suburbanites, laid-off tech workers, and America’s ever-growing army of the “working poor.” And if we look closely enough, we’ll have to conclude that poverty is not, after all, a cultural aberration or a character flaw. Poverty is a shortage of money.