Unlimited Funding

open a 24 hour day care centre for parents making less than $____________ a year

quote:

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Originally posted by Michelle:
[b]I would focus on groups that lobby the government to fund universal child care, housing, etc. It wouldn't do any good to give it to soup kitchens and charities and to open up a few day care centres with it, because those are just bandaid solutions and ultimately reinforce inequity ("Are there no soup kitchens? Are there no homeless shelters? We don't need to create housing or raise welfare rates or bring in universal day care...")[/b]

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I respectfully disagree [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img] (so says the ED of a social services based charity!!)

*note conflict of self serving interest*

Lobbying isn't an effective use of dollars.

Unless we change the public's perception of poverty, nothing will change at the government level.

How long has Campaign 2000 been working to end the clawback? It hasn't happened yet.

I've often said that we should, and our agencies should just close up shop and then the government would have to step in...but would they, can't take the risk.

I know what we fund augments services that are already in place.

I'm currently working on a committee that is/was funded by Status of Women (last grant our the door we were) that is looking at changing the grassroots attitudes towards poverty etc.

I've been waiting 22 years for a national day care program (personally) and I don't need it anymore, but I'm hoping that it will be there for my grandchildren (when they get here in what better be no sooner than 10 years).

In the meantime we need to ensure the gaps are narrowed as much as possible.

Most of us would gladly give up our low paid jobs if the issues went away.

There are tons of jobs in the "disease" charitable field we could all switch over to if we had no social services jobs left.

Besides the United Way of Toronto's Poverty Report got a massive amount of attention, including Queens Park, bringing light to Toronto's poverty issues and linking it to gun violence. That's lobbying!

Our Health Unit is a huge lobbyist to our upper tier regional government for poverty reduction, utilizing the Social Determinants of Health as the basis for the argument.

But our farmer father's want to play with roads, not help people out.

OCAP has done a great job, and at the same time brought attention to a loop hole that got closed. When I have clients with no doctor it's really hard to get the dietary forms filled out and signed. Our local legal clinic has a lot of cases where doctors can't be found or can't "get around" to sign in disability forms.

The additional $30 for a diabetic is no where near enough to eat properly as a diabetic.

None of the larger anti-poverty groups is looking at rural poverty, it's all urban focused.

I'm not the 'blasting' type. [img]cool.gif" border="0[/img]

I certainly didn't take your post to mean that I was part of the problem, and not the solution. You raise a very vaild point.

Everyday we weigh the services we create and provide, against the perception that we're allowing the government to slack off on its responsibilities.

But when the angst settles, it is the people who I see face to face I'm concerned about.

In a lot of my committees we discuss lobbying and meeting with MPs and MPPs etc. I always want actionable items.

Yes we need to meet with these guys, but in the meantime, while we wait for a policy change, what can I do, right now, in this moment, to make a life easier.

Last August I gave out 530+ fully stocked backpacks, built age appropriate and all went out before school started. Everything was donated by the community. We parked a school bus outside of Wal Mart (love them or hate them they also gave me $2 000 cash and paid for the radio promotion - I still only shop there if I have too) and people filled it with back to school supplies.

It was truly exhausting buying all the supplies and getting the backpacks out to our agencies for distribution.

Stop-gap: yes.

Should people be paid a living wage so they could afford these supplies? Yes.

But on the other hand, it cost me $500 to get my grade 12 student ready for school this year. She needed scrubs for her co-op placement, on top of the usual stuff.

You add 2 or 3 kids to a family, and the list home from the school:

3 pairs of shoes each
gym uniform (bought from the school)
lab fees
activity fees
text book fees

And even double income working families struggle.

So we step in with a community outreach, and make sure no kid goes to school empty handed.

I was stopped in Wal Mart by a school teacher (dragging two carts full of just backpacks gave me away) and she told me the difference our program made to the children she taught.

In a sense it's an anti-bullying program.

So while we work on the ground in the moment, we do rely on, and cheer the lobbying efforts of those such as NAPO etc. We risk our charitable status if we lobby to obviously (which is why I liked having the column because if I crossed the line I wrote about it and made it personal work, not work work).

The emotional roller coaster of the backpack collection was brutal. I had a waiting list and when you have parents crying on the phone because I can't promise anything, I can only try, you feel horrible. You feel like you're just not working hard enough. Then the local women's shelter calls and they need 99 for all in residence and those in 2nd stage housing plus the outreach program.

Some days, at the end of the day, there's not a lot of 'me' left.

But when I go to the community, and I put out an appeal and tell the story of what I'm trying to do, and people respond, your heart fills.

When you hear the squeals of a 5 year old who got a Spiderman backpack, after his mother coached him on saying "Thank you even if it's yucky looking", makes it all worth while.

Yeah we let the government off the hook, but we also keep the public informed, we tackle the stereotypes head on, and we tell our stories.

Aquire Alexander Ovechkin for the Canucks.

If I had access to unlimited funding, I'd see that lagatta got 90% of it, because her ideas are super. The other 10% I'd use for immediate needs here on the Lower North Shore, of which there are many.

Actually, Quebec's Polaris has started the road from La Romain going west. It's very slow going, it could take quite a while to reach Kegaska. La Romaine is one of the most prosperous communities on the coast - also one of the largest - and has a full length airstrip, paved, that can accomodate almost any size aircraft other than jumbos.