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Working together to combat poverty

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The Forest City’s new Poverty Research Centre will attempt to bridge the gap between stats-heavy research and Londoners experiencing poverty first hand, according to organizers who discussed new details about the project at King’s University College April 8.

“If we are successful, our three target audiences will have a different and more sophisticated language to use in public debates about poverty,” said Ross Fair, a member of the Centre’s task force.

“Citizens will be more articulate in voicing their concerns to elected officials, agencies will have deeper data sets in assessing program priorities and funders will be better able to set priories to assign scarce resources.”

The London Community Foundation announced in December a $250,000 grant to get the Poverty Research Centre off the ground. The London Food Bank and the Sisters of St. Joseph have also committed funds over the next three years, $25,000 and $50,000 per year each, respectively.

On Tuesday, organizers — including representatives from Emerging Leaders and Sisters of St. Joseph — said the Centre will focus its research on three areas: precarious employment, food security and mental health and homelessness. But how it does that research is what has organizers from local anti-poverty agencies eager to get started.

Glen Pearson, co-director of The London Food Bank and a member of the Centre’s task force, described the approach as “living research.” Inspired by work with his NGO Canadian Aid for South Sudan, Pearson said the Centre wants to work closely with Londoners who are experiencing poverty, providing faces to the issue in the hope that will inspire the community to take action.

“What it means is we want to speak with people,” added Fair. “I think it’s important for people to put a human face on this, to understand that stats are stats. You’ve got to have them but … what is the real impact for people?”

Now that the Centre has been announced, work is being done to launch a website — povertyresearch.ca — that will include current information about poverty in London. It’s expected to go live by this fall. The database will host future research by the Centre and provide academics, anti-poverty activists, media and the public quick access to poverty-related information.

The Centre is also working on a partnership with King’s University College, where 28 faculty members have volunteered to be part of the project.

“We want our faculty engaged in applied research with the Centre,” said Sauro Camiletti, academic dean at Kings. “We’re excited about this whole aspect of living research. We have programs in many areas that can feed into this database and can make sense of the data. Even within our own faculty they don’t necessarily know what one another is doing. We’re a large school. So when they come together to focus on a project … I think it’s very exciting.”

Organizers said The Poverty Research Centre has a sustainability plan that will take it to 2022.

Chris.montanini@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @LondonerChris

 

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