Canadians expect our country to provide equality of rights and opportunities to all Canadians. Equality and equity are basic pillars of our society. But the reality of today’s Canada is different. Not everyone is enjoying the social and economic opportunities our country offers.
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More than 1 million Canadian children live in poverty (2001 figure). Canada’s child poverty rate has hovered between 15 and 17 percent for 30 years.
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Work is no longer a guaranteed escape from poverty. Average two-parent, low-wage working families subsist at $10,200 below the poverty line.
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Access does not equal outcome. Canadian-born Blacks, for example, are as likely as other Canadians to have attended university (21 %), but they have higher rates of unemployment (7.9% vs. 6%) and lower average incomes ($32,000 vs. $37,200).
Many of Canada’s community foundations believe they have a role to play in addressing these and other fundamental social, economic and environmental issues. For decades, community foundations have supported the groups and organizations that meet their communities’ most urgent needs: settlement houses, food banks, literacy programs, immigrant services, homeless shelters, and other invaluable supports. They intend to continue to do so – but community foundations are also exploring ways to tackle the root causes of those needs.
With support from The Ford Foundation and the Atkinson Charitable Foundation, and the Social Partnerships program of the Government of Canada, Community Foundations of Canada (CFC) and its members have explored the role community foundations can play in social justice issues. More recently, we have tried to facilitate the poverty-reduction work of community foundations by publishing a web-based toolkit titled "From Good Causes to Root Causes" to assist them with their strategizing, planning, execution and evaluation.
For more information about CFC's work in this area, please contact Sara Lyons at 613.236.2664 ext. 331 or slyons@cfc-fcc.ca.
"We often speak of solving 'problems' when we are, in fact, focusing on symptoms. This confusion diverts attention from the ways change occurs and the options that are available to us or that need to be created to achieve a just, equitable, and environmentally sound society. Such a transformation is necessary if we are to consider what philanthropy can be."
Stephen Viederman (Symposium on Race and Philanthropy, 2002)
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