Blog post by Sarah Haanstra, Co-chair of the Guelph & Wellington Poverty Task Force

2013 Report to the Community
2014 Strategic Plan

It was just a little more than 5 years ago that over 100 people turned up at a poverty symposium at St. Georges Church to learn from other communities already mobilized around the issue of poverty, to listen to stories from people affected by poverty in our community and to talk about how we could work together to take action.

A lot has happened in the last 5 years. What started as a call to action, is now the Guelph Wellington Task Force for Poverty Elimination, a group of diverse voices working collaboratively to take local action and advocate for system and policy changes to address the root causes of poverty.

We started our work together uncertain of what we would become. Our first Strategic Plan was created after a few meetings and it’s probably safe to say that we all had slightly different visions for this group and ideas about what we would or could accomplish.

Over the last five years we have figured out what we (as a taskforce of committed people) are good at and what we are uniquely positioned to do to respond to poverty in our community. We have found our way and taken meaningful action to address the reasons people continue to live in poverty in our community. The places we have put our energy were partly guided by our first strategic plan, but more so, our actions and energy over the last 5 years will drive our second plan.

The creation of a new plan allowed us to take time to pause. We didn’t pause by stopping our work. We paused to check in with each other: have we had meaningful impact? Are we heading in the right direction? Where do we need to go next?

Our new Strategic Plan opens with a few quotes. This is my favourite:

 “We have a strategic plan. It’s called doing things.” (Herb Kelleher)

I think the Poverty Task Force has a strategic plan AND we do things.

Our new Plan puts a structure around the work we already do and we plan to do. It helps us to frame and talk about the priorities and pathways of the Task Force. It is also a strategic document to guide our decisions about where our time and energy will go in the future.

Our Vision and Mission are our starting point. These are what we said we’d do and how we say we’ll do it.  Everything we do is about working to make our vision a reality through our mission. Our values were refined to remind us what we consider as the important principles in our work. Our pathways are the things we do to accomplish our priorities; they are the role we play in the community. And our priorities: income inequality, affordable housing and homelessness, food security, and health inequities are where we will put our focus for the next 3 years.

Our membership includes people with diverse experience, knowledge and expertise; together these committed people are working on issues that matter to people living in poverty. The commitment of people with lived experience in poverty is critical to our success. Their willingness to share their stories, input, ideas, experience and expertise as members of the Steering Committee, The Poverty Task Force member committee, the action and standing committees and Community Voices is truly one of the key reasons for the relevance and success of the Task Force.

Despite our efforts, it’s important to note that people continue to live in poverty in our community and in every community across Ontario and Canada. They face daily barriers to find adequate housing, healthy food and to access the health services they need.

With this in mind, the Poverty Task Force continues our work. In the next year we’ll do many things including a Living Wage community conversation series, support key elements of the 10-year Homelessness and Housing Plan for Guelph and Wellington, support the development of a community food hub and support local action and long-term advocacy to improve access to oral health care. It’s the collective commitment and collective action of the members of the Poverty Task Force that make all these actions possible.

It is with great pleasure that we launch our new Strategic Plan. It builds on our collective understanding of what the Taskforce is, draws on our strengths, and pushes us to take on new challenges.

I look forward to the next year with great anticipation about the potential and possibility of what we will do together. Our work is not done, until our vision becomes a reality for people living in Guelph and Wellington.