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About Vibrant Communities – Learn about the national movement, VC Across Canada, our partners & friend and how you can participate in the movement by joining a community of practice.
What's New - Quick access to the most recent Vibrant Communities resources and online seminars.
Event Listing - Register now to participate in upcoming tele-learning and face-to-face learning events.
Bookstore - Discover and explore books developed by Tamarack and others.
Aides for Action - Find resources to assist you in applying learning and taking action.
Online Audio Seminars - Listen to audio seminars with thought leaders from Canada and around the world.
Action-Learning Topics - Explore topics such as Understanding Poverty, Comprehensiveness, Working Across Boundaries, Operational Issues, Policy Makers & Funders and Resiliency.
Engage! E-Magazine - Tamarack's signature e-magazine, provides useful resources and interesting articles on collaboration and engagement. Subscribe here!
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 Vibrant Communities is a community-driven effort to reduce poverty in Canada by creating partnerships that make use of our most valuable assets – people, organizations, businesses and governments.
Vibrant Communities links communities across Canada, from British Columbia to Newfoundland, in a collective effort to test the most effective ways to reduce poverty at the grassroots level.
Learn more about Vibrant Communities here.
Getting Out the Vote
Opportunities Waterloo Region has a new website that will make it easy for voters, especially low-income voters, to find out how and, more importantly, why they should vote in the upcoming municipal election. Waterloo Region Votes gathers links to election related events and news in one easy-to-find spot and uses Google Maps technology to help users identify who is running in their area.
Vibrant Communities Saint John is working with Elections New Brunswick and other partners to increase participation of low income voters in the next provincial election. More polling stations, hiring low income residents to work the polls, funding communications materials, community events and barbeques, and engaging low income residents at the door are part of the plans. Look for updates and commentary in the next issue of Around the Block, a community newspaper published for VCSJ’s five priority neighbourhoods. Current and past issues of Around the Block are available here.
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Vibrant Communities Go Social
Vibrant Communities across Canada are increasingly using Twitter, Facebook and other social media to engage, and be engaged by their communities. Starting in January 2010, Vibrant Communities Calgary began using social media to build awareness about poverty issues – in plenty of time for municipal elections in October. Candidates and people living in poverty in Calgary are taking advantage of the opportunity to learn more about each other. Read more on how Vibrant Calgary Rides the Social Media Wave in this Caledon Institute Community Story.
Interested in how other Vibrant Communities are using social media? Follow these Vibrant Communities on Twitter: Calgary, Hamilton, Waterloo Region, and Abbottsford.
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Calculating a Living Wage
Employers in British Columbia can now see the difference providing extra holiday days, extended health care or other benefits can make to their employees. They can calculate “what if” scenarios based on increasing benefits using online living wage calculator that helps employers assess how benefits affect the living wage. The calculator is a project of Living Wage for Families. A living wage is the wage required to keep a family with two children and two working parents above the poverty line.
Victoria’s Quality of Life CHALLENGE expresses the idea of a living wage as an affordability index, as the index reflects the costs of living in a community. The CHALLENCE recently released their 2010 Affordability Index.
Provincial Poverty Reduction Strategy Tele-learning Series
This series profiles provincial efforts to reduce poverty, including the role of both place and community engagement in the strategies. Join us on August 26 to hear about Manitoba’s poverty reduction strategy. Register Now!
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In May, forty-six senior leaders – including the CEO of United Way Canada, the Deputy Minister of New Brunswick, heads from several major corporations, academics and philanthropists – were invited by Tim Brodhead of the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, and Paul Born of Tamarack - An Institute for Community Engagement, to join a strategic dialogue about working collaboratively to tackle poverty.
This event included focused dialogues around a number of key challenges including: broadening civic engagement; the roles of business and government in community change efforts; impacts currently generated by intermediary organizations; and maintaining momentum.
Evidence about the patterns, themes and results of comprehensive community approaches to poverty reduction was also presented.
Participants then generated a list of ideas and future actions within six broad categories: public awareness and attitudes; framing and communication; place-based poverty reduction strategies; resources for place-based poverty reduction; policies for place-based poverty reduction; and a pan-Canadian Campaign.
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