What we found out about the "architecture" of supports provided to local communities tackling poverty.

The Vibrant Communities initiative began in 2002 when a group of urban collaboratives from across Canada and three national sponsors began to experiment with significantly reducing poverty through comprehensive and multi-sectoral efforts. Between 2002-2011, over a dozen local poverty reduction roundtables contributed to 256 initiatives that have generated 439,435  benefits to 202,931 low income households and generated scores of systemic and policy changes while improving local awareness and commitment to reducing poverty over the longer term. This work was enabled by a large and diverse array of national supports that created a sophisticated "architecture" of support rarely seen in other national efforts. What difference - if any - did it all make? What are the lessons for supporting other local efforts to tackle complex issues? These are the questions explored in the soon-to-be released next installment of the Vibrant Communities evaluation: Inspired Learning: An Evaluation of Vibrant Communities National Supports.

Over three Saturdays in November and December 2011, forty-four randomly selected Toronto residents met to "learn about the city's growing income gap, understand the challenges, and consider the choices we will need to make to ensure that Toronto remains a competitive, liveable, and inclusive city." The recommendations of this group – who became known as The Toronto Residents Reference Panel on Household Income – speak to the growing sense of social and economic anxiety felt by many Torontonians and also demonstrate the admirable ability and willingness of Toronto residents to play a more substantial role in addressing the city's most pressing social and economic challenges.

What do Bruce Springsteen, food banks and minor hockey have in common?  All three are part of the inspiration behind Tom Hedican's award-winning Coach4Food Program which began in North Bay Ontario in 2005.  In 2010, the North Bay Coach4Food program successfully raised 108,000 pounds of food for area food banks and expansions in Guelph, Niagara Falls, St Catharines and Parry Sound raised a combined 20,000 pounds more.

How Communities Heal is a book developed by The New Zealand Social Entrepreneur Fellowship, a peer learning community of outstanding New Zealand change-makers. The book's latest chapter, A Generous Difference by Vivian Hutchinson, shares the story of one social entrepreneur's challenge to secure funding for "real innovation" from mainstream organizations. The article includes insights from a number of well-respected New Zealand philanthropists to make the case that the role of philanthropy must transform and that a new level of partnership between philanthropy and social entrepreneurs will facilitate this transformation.