United Way Strategy
John Huether is an educator, social worker and a great leader in the community. Over the years he has worked in many organizations. He worked as a Director at Children’s Aid.John spoke about United Way of Peel Investment Strategy. Within the context of Peel Region’s demographics and social challenges, a foundational focus on poverty as the connecting theme provides strategic attention and depth to United Way’s investment strategy. The theme conveys hope, inspiration and possibilities that create opportunities for a better life for everyone in our community.
The major issue in Peel region is that 195,000 people are living below the poverty line. This represents more than 15% of the region’s population. Poverty is the result of many factors and overlapping social problems and no single project can address them all. We need to develop a holistic, long-term approach that tackles poverty on many fronts. By addressing poverty, we have to look from poverty to possibilities, food security, emergency and transitional; housing supports (i.e. St. Leonard’s). We also have to develop an approach to conditions of investment that address: diversity and equity policies, practices of funded organizations.
We need strong neighborhoods: Neighborhoods have a key impact on quality of life and can be contributing factors of poverty, violence, unhealthy behavior.
Photo by Joan Whelan