This past Tuesday we heard from Andrea Burkhardt, pictured, from End Poverty Edmonton, on the Initiative of the City of Edmonton to end poverty in Edmonton, within a generation. This initiative was established in 2015, and they now have developed a road map to guide them forwards. The road map sets out five main goals with a total of thirty-five actions that have each been assigned to various groups around the city of Edmonton to address. It also sets benchmarks against which the results are to be measured.
We have about one hundred thousand people in Edmonton living in poverty, including about thirty-five thousand children. The cost of health and social services to our Alberta economy for services provided each year to those living in poverty is over seven billion dollars. Lifting people out of poverty has some very real benefits for all of us.
In the past many different groups in Edmonton have been rescuing people from problem situations, Rotary being one of those groups, but most of these actions do not comprehensively address the root cause of the problems, which is poverty. The five goals of the road map are 1) Toward True Reconciliation, 2) Justice for All, 3) Move People out of Poverty, 4) Invest in a Poverty Free Future and 5) Change the Conversation: Build a Movement to End Poverty. Andrea explained that we need to remove the stigma around people who live in poverty.
There are six game changers, that if we do them well, will help to end poverty. These are to 1) Eliminate racism, by creating ways to recognise, include and celebrate the culture of our aboriginal peoples and other cultural groups. 2) Create livable incomes, the living wage in Edmonton is closing in on seventeen dollars and hour, but twenty percent of the population still works for less than fifteen dollars on hour. 3) Affordable housing, is an essential element in this strategy. 4) Affordable and accessible transit at all hours for homes, schools, services and places of business so that people can move easily from one to the other. 5) Child care that is affordable and high quality, and finally 6) Access to Mental Health and Addictions Services.
Half of these thirty-five actions belong to the City of Edmonton to address and the other half are spread among many different groups. She invited Rotary to have a look at the road map action points to see which of these things we can help to address. Ending poverty is not something any one group can do alone, we all need to work together on this problem. These goals are not set in stone, they can and will shift over time.
The current budget of the City of Edmonton to address these issues is set at five and a half million dollars a year and they are still in the process of setting benchmarks and ways to measure their progress. Poverty is about inclusion in society, not just money. Poverty and loneliness often go hand in hand. We can make a difference in peoples lives in more than just a monetary way by helping to end poverty.
Andrea Burkhardt