Vibrant Communities is a pan-Canadian, action-learning initiative that supports and explores promising local solutions for poverty-reduction. On this page you can learn more about our history and approach.
On this page you’ll find:
To create and grow a movement of diverse leaders and communities from across Canada who are committed to exploring, challenging and testing ways to unleash the potential of communities to substantially reduce poverty and ensure a good quality of life for all citizens.
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.
It’s a unique approach to poverty reduction that allows communities to learn from — and help — each other.
Vibrant Communities links communities across Canada, from British Columbia to Newfoundland and Labrador, in a collective effort to test the most effective ways to reduce poverty at the grassroots level.
We concentrate on four key approaches:
- Comprehensive local initiatives aimed at poverty reduction;
- Grassroots collaboration involving all sectors of the community in these initiatives;
- Identifying community assets and putting them to good use in poverty-reduction efforts;
- A commitment to learning, change and sharing our learnings – whether they are the product of our successes or failures.
Vibrant Communities is supported by four project sponsors: The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, the Caledon Institute of Social Policy, Human Resources and Social Development Canada and Tamarack – An Institute for Community Engagement.
Trail Builders are the living laboratories of Vibrant Communities – multisectoral collaborative initiatives in 12 communities across Canada where new ideas about poverty reduction are put to the test.
Once a Trail Builder proposal is approved, the community receives targeted funding support from the McConnell Family Foundation to augment funds already raised locally.
Trail Builders also receive coaching, learning and evaluation supports from the Vibrant Communities national office.
As part of their commitment, Trail Builders establish measurable targets they expect to achieve during the life of their project.
The experiences and learnings from the first four years of Vibrant Communities’ work have been documented in the following reports:
- In From the Field: Exploring the First Poverty Reduction Strategies Undertaken by Trail Builders in the Vibrant Communities Initiative. Download the report here.
- Understanding the Potential & Practice of Comprehensive, Multisectoral Efforts to Reduce Poverty: The Preliminary Experiences of the Vibrant Communities Trail Builders. Download the report here.
- Reflecting on Vibrant Communities: 2002-2006. Download the report here.
A more comprehensive summary of Vibrant Communities can be found in Creating Vibrant Communities, a book written to celebrate and document the theory and practice of Vibrant Communities. Order your copy through our Bookstore here.
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