This seminar looks at Garry Loewen’s resource, A Compendium of Poverty Reduction Strategies and Frameworks. The resource contains 147 strategies that groups have used to try to reduce poverty, categorizes and describes the individual strategies, and describes frameworks and processes that groups use to help them move toward greater levels of comprehensiveness.
The resource was designed to answer the question, “when groups and organizations set about to reduce poverty in their community, what concrete actions do they actually take to achieve that result?”
This seminar discusses how different understandings of poverty affect the selection of strategies that attempt to reduce it.
Learning Objective:
To develop a broader understanding of the substantive strategies that could be employed in a place-based, comprehensive and collaborative effort to reduce poverty
Garry Loewen - Early in his working life, Garry held senior management positions with Air Canada, including Executive Assistant to the President and General Manager of Air Canada’s operations at Toronto International Airport. He then served as a parish minister for five years. From 1999 to 2002, Garry served as Executive Director of the North End Community Renewal Corporation in Winnipeg, and from 1999 to 2000, was Executive Director of The Canadian Community Economic Development Network. He was also Community Economic Development Director for the Mennonite Central Committee Manitoba from 1991 to 2000. Garry is currently self-employed as a community and economic development consultant. Garry helped found and has been an active leader of Vibrant Communities since 2002.
Mark Cabaj - Mark Cabaj is the lead coach at Tamarack and Vibrant Communities, working with foundations, all levels of government, voluntary organizations and businesses to assist them with their specific community engagement efforts.
Mark first cut his teeth on community building with Human Resources Development Canada and Aboriginal groups in rural Alberta. In the early 1990s, he served as the Foreign Assistance Coordinator for Grants in Poland’s Ministry of Privatization and Mission Coordinator for the United Nations Development Programme’s first regional economic development initiative in Eastern Europe. Read more here.
The motivation for the compendium was to provide a primer, an explanation of what groups actually do when they try to reduce poverty. The compendium lists 147 different strategies, but it does not try to give examples of the different ways they are done nor any commentary on “best practices” – when a strategy might be appropriate or what conditions are necessary for success. The collection of strategies is meant to be a quick reference for individuals and groups to be able to identify in a very accessible way what their choices are if they want to work at poverty reduction.
How you frame poverty will affect what strategies you choose. The compendium borrows from another seminar series, Poverty and Poverty Reduction, that discusses different definitions of poverty:
Absolute poverty
Relative poverty
Poverty as dependence
Poverty as inclusion
Poverty as capabilities deprivation
In this clip, Garry gives examples of strategies that would be most attractive to you depending on your definition of poverty.
A comprehensive framework can also help you choose strategies. The graphic below shows the number of things you have to work at to achieve deep and durable changes, as well as the nature of the choices groups have to make.
Programmatic strategies are usually targeted at generating direct and immediate benefits to households while systemic interventions are designed to change the context that households live in.
Here, Garry explains some distinctions between programmatic and systemic strategies and gives an example of how they are linked:
The Poverty Compendium – This resource categorizes 147 strategies for reducing poverty and describes frameworks and processes that groups use to move towards comprehensiveness.
Poverty and Poverty Reduction - This three-part seminar series examines alternative approaches to conceiving poverty and poverty reduction. It seeks to strengthen the capacity of communities to make choices about how best to frame, unfold, measure and communicate about local poverty reduction efforts.
Comprehensive Strategies for Deep & Durable Change - This online seminar frames the concept of “comprehensiveness” and outlines the strengths and limitations of such approaches for achieving deep and durable outcomes. It is the first session in a four part series that includes a session on the Poverty Compendium.
Books by Robert Gilroth – Garry referred to author Robert Gilroth, who has written several books on workforce development that distinguish between “first chance” (traditional educational systems) and “second chance” (workforce services) strategies.
Urban Aboriginal Strategy – Garry explained how the Winnipeg arm of this initiative applied a comprehensive framework to its work.
Comprehensive Strategies for Deep & Durable Outcomes –What are the different ways to pursue comprehensive approaches to poverty reduction? What are the strengths and limitations of such approaches in achieving deep and durable outcomes?
Comprehensive Community Initiatives – In this paper, the Caledon Institute provides an overview of the key ideas associated with comprehensive community initiatives.
Core Principles of Comprehensiveness& Community Building – In Chapter Two from Voicesfrom the Field II, the Aspen Roundtable reflects on the core principles of comprehensive community initiatives after 10 years of practical experience across the US.
This seminar looks at Garry Loewen’s resource, 
Garry Loewen - Early in his working life, Garry held senior management positions with Air Canada, including Executive Assistant to the President and General Manager of Air Canada’s operations at Toronto International Airport. He then served as a parish minister for five years. From 1999 to 2002, Garry served as Executive Director of the North End Community Renewal Corporation in Winnipeg, and from 1999 to 2000, was Executive Director of The Canadian Community Economic Development Network. He was also Community Economic Development Director for the Mennonite Central Committee Manitoba from 1991 to 2000. Garry is currently self-employed as a community and economic development consultant. Garry helped found and has been an active leader of Vibrant Communities since 2002.
Mark Cabaj - Mark Cabaj is the lead coach at Tamarack and 
