May 21, 2008
One city. One heart. One Way.
Frances Lankin's speech at the United Way Toronto Annual General Meeting
The list of Thanks A Million award recipients is just extraordinary.
I'm always struck by the incredible diversity of United Way support as well as the generosity of our partners from across the community.
Every year, public and private sector, business and labour come together in common purpose: To advance the common good.
You know, United Way is founded on a simple but profound principle:
That what unites us in our city is ultimately more powerful than what divides us.
United Way really embodies the spirit of people coming together…
…from all walks of life, from all parts of our city, and sharing a common aspiration.
To create opportunities for a better life for everyone in our community, regardless of where you're from or where you live.
There's a sentiment, I think, that really sums up that spirit of people coming together to help each other.
One City. One Heart. One Way.
It's a powerful idea.
One I find touching and inspirational in the way it describes how our city pulls together every year, helping United Way to support the social fabric that ties our community together, and helping to create lasting change.
I want to begin this morning with an important announcement that speaks to the difference we make together in our community.
Every year we announce our annual campaign achievement.
It's an important announcement for a host of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the scale of our fundraising achievement is a very real testament to the compassion the people of Toronto have for each other.
This is a generous city.
But more important is the announcement we make later in the year.
When we report what we're able to do for the community with the resources we raise every year.
I am very proud to announce this year that United Way will be investing $74.8 million in the community.
This is a significant increase over last year.
Our Community Fund enables United Way to make a difference every single day in the lives of people living in our city.
And we couldn't do any of it without the caring and compassion of so many of you.
The Community Fund enables United Way to support important initiatives and strategies that work to address some of the underlying causes of our social problems.
And it's the most important tool we have to strengthen the lives of individuals, families, and communities by supporting services that improve peoples' lives.
Let me give you a couple of concrete examples.
I was out in Rexdale visiting Braeburn Neighbourhood Place, where I met Shoba Adore.
Shoba's the Executive Director. A wonderful woman, she exudes community… It's heart and soul.
She grew up in Rexdale, right in the neighbourhood. And she was helped by that agency.
Shoba went on to university. She is by any measure a success.
She could've gone on and done anything she wanted. But she chose to go back to the neighbourhood and dedicate her life to helping others…
…to making a difference.
She took me on a tour where I saw many remarkable, inspiring things. But one thing, in particular, stuck.
She was so proud of their kitchen at Braeburn. Just a little kitchen, but clean, industrial looking, stainless steel.
She pointed out the three women there chopping carrots, celery, and putting together nutritious snacks.
As we talked, other people were coming in and loading the snacks into boxes which were then taken out to vans.
The vans were used to deliver the snacks to children in schools all over the neighbourhood.
Thousands of kids that day – and every day – were getting a nutritious snack.
Why does that matter?
The majority of these kids are from homes that don't have a lot of money.
Teachers tell us these kids come to school without enough food in their bellies.
Food feeds not only their little bodies, but their minds, too.
Going to school without enough to eat, they can't learn, they can't thrive, they can't grow.
Their opportunities shrink. Their future narrows.
Just one organization, mobilizing the power of neighbourhood volunteers to cut vegetables, pack snacks into boxes, load them into vans, and deliver them to schools means every child in school in that community gets at least one nutritious snack a day.
It makes a huge difference.
There are many examples where people are making a difference each and every day to the people who live in our community.
From helping frail seniors through delivering meals and offering them a chance to connect with other people to ensuring support is there for the homeless and the hungry.
The Community Fund supports emergency shelters for women and children fleeing abuse and helps them establish their own financial security.
It provides employment training and settlement support for newcomers.
And it provides support for youth so they have alternatives to gang culture.
United Way has always believed we must provide the support for urgent services people need every day.
But we also work to build a better future for all. By making a long-term difference.
We strive to understand what the most pressing issues are in the community and then we work to align our efforts against those issues.
Our strategies to address the needs of Toronto neighbourhoods, newcomers and youth are based on research that told us, one: we needed a “place-based” strategy to help address systemic challenges.
And, two: that the most vulnerable populations in need of support in many of our neighbourhoods are young people and newcomers to Canada.
Coming out of our research, we – and the City of Toronto – identified 13 neighbourhoods in need of targeted support.
These are neighbourhoods that face some significant challenges.
Declining housing stock, businesses leaving the community, lack of services, and not a lot of support for social services for families and kids.
There's a lack of adequate transit, and many of these neighbourhoods are not safe places for people to live.
A large number of families are living in poverty. But the character of that poverty is interesting.
80 per cent of the families living in deep poverty were also families that worked.
These are families that have parents working two or three jobs.
Sometimes, two or three families live together in order to put a roof over head.
You can imagine the kids in these communities.
With no after school programs, and with parents away trying to work to make ends meet, the kids hang out at the local strip mall.
Driven away from the malls, the kids moved down the street or to the local ravine to hang out.
You can imagine what happened to these kids.
They were ripe for the picking.
Coming from families who can't afford to buy the Nikes or cell phones other kids have at school. And seeing parents working so hard only to fall further behind, these kids were losing faith in their own future.
That's where the gangs and the drug dealers come in.
The chance to make a quick buck at the age of 12 or 13 or 14 looks like an easy solution. The chance to belong to something looks like opportunity.
Too many of those kids are now lost to us.
The summer we announced our Neighbourhood Strategy…
…the summer we said, “we're going to make a difference here, we're going to work together, bring in partners, get parents involved in the neighbourhood, going to bring in services…”
That summer became known as the Summer of the Gun.
We had more shootings that year than any other time.
We lost so many young people.
Sons, brothers, friends.
We also lost some fathers, just young teens themselves.
I met some of the mothers who lost children that summer.
The grief was unimaginable.
But so was their drive to make things look different, to change conditions so that their neighbours' kids didn't die, too.
These mothers were possessed with a sense of purpose so powerful and so moving.
One of the issues United Way was working on was the problem of kids having nowhere to go after school.
No sports or recreation programs.
No academic programs.
No leadership opportunities.
Community groups couldn't afford space to run programs. Sometimes they couldn't find space even if they could afford it.
Worse was the fact that many community groups couldn't run programs in public schools because the schools charged too much for use.
One woman, a mother who had lost her own son to gang violence, said to me:
“What does it say about our society when our schools come four o'clock, we close the doors on our young, and they walk around the corner to find a drug dealer waiting with open arms and a welcome smile?”
It was a powerful sentiment coming from someone in such obvious pain, but trying so hard to make a difference.
We work with communities to help make this picture look different.
How do we do this?
Action for Neighbourhood Change is our strategy to help local residents lead change in their own community. We started with 5 neighbourhoods. Last year we expanded Action for Neighbourhood Change to 4 more.
And this year, we will be expanding to 4 more.
We're seeing some remarkable things happening.
This year alone, there will be 8 neighbourhood festivals. Celebrations of the local community where residents will come together, share food and success stories, and help broaden awareness of the great qualities that make these areas true neighbourhoods.
A few short years ago, there were no festivals like this in these neighbourhoods.
Residents of these areas often never had the sense of community that goes with the idea of neighbourhood.
Now they are celebrating where they live, sharing the pride they have in their community.
More importantly, residents in these neighbourhoods are learning the skills they need to advocate for the community, to speak up and demand change, and to help make that change happen.
Some of the actions of the resident associations are remarkable, making change in even the smallest ways.
One woman took it upon herself to draw attention to the lack of transit service in her neighbourhood.
Tired of being told that bus service was both regular and of adequate frequency, she sat out at the local bus stop – in her wheelchair – for an entire day and recorded the scant few times the bus actually came by.
The information she gathered is going to be used by local residents to take to the city's neighbourhood action table in order to press for better service.
Sometimes the most significant change comes from a community itself. United Way's Action for Neighbourhood Change is working to help local residents find their voice and the means to put their ideas into action.
Lack of services is a significant challenge in many neighbourhoods.
That's why we're continuing to fund the development of Community Service Hubs in the priority neighbourhoods.
We made significant progress last year in getting through the development and approval phases for our first hubs.
This year we'll see construction begin in Eglinton East – Kennedy Park.
The Community Hubs are a remarkable achievement in working together to achieve community outcomes.
We have brought together local residents, private donors, agencies, the City, and the Province to the table in a project with significant impact for neighbourhoods.
Large, complex projects like the Community Hubs are an important achievement.
But we also have terrific examples of smaller community-driven programs with tremendous impact.
There's a drop-in centre up in the Jane-Finch area called The Spot.
It's a storefront operation.
Those kids don't hang out outside now. They hang out inside The Spot.
They hang out in this wonderful, magical space where they are with each other, where they are accessing adult leadership and allies, where they are getting leadership training, where they are organizing activities for other youth in the community.
We need many, many more Spots.
It's making a difference.
Byron runs The Spot. And he says for many of the youth there, this place can feel like home.
A safe place for young people to chill out.
They're safe from bullying and harassment.
They won't feel isolated.
And most important, youth are involved in all aspects of the centre, including the design of the programming.
We're working to bring more programs like it to our neighbourhoods.
Because, when we met with people in communities…
…met with the mothers who had lost their sons, and heard the reason why...
…we worked with a community agency to invest in opening up a storefront operation in the very kind of strip-mall where the kids liked to hang out.
Rather than expect young people to come looking for help, The Spot went and met young people where they're at.
We believe that if we can get at what lies behind problems, the underlying causes of the challenges people face, we can help prevent problems from occurring in the first place.
We call this working at the forefront of change.
Our goal is now to fulfill long-term needs so that we lift whole communities.
We know that today's problems are complex. And that it takes the whole community working together to change social conditions.
No one organization, no one level of government, can solve systemic problems.
But working in partnership with others, and by mobilizing people and resources, we can address the root causes of our city's shared challenges.
I want to give you a couple of good examples of how we do this.
[TEF]
[Pathways to Education]
Using our research, mobilizing the partnerships and leveraging the community's attention against priorities in the same way, making a difference every single day…
That's the story of United Way and what we're able to do with the support of so many.
I started off with One City. One Heart. One Way.
Let me conclude here this morning with a word about what we mean by One Way.
Or rather what we don't mean.
We don't meant there's JUST one way.
We don't mean our way, or the highway.
When I think about One Way, I think about you.
Of course, I'm being a bit clever here, we do mean it to be a play on words, United Way.
But when we say one way – United Way – we don't mean the building at 26 Wellington Street.
We don't mean the staff working there.
We mean everyone.
Our countless volunteers in workplaces all over the city.
Our partner agencies and the people on the front line delivering services people need.
United Way is all of us. You, me, everyone.
And it's the way we work together to build a stronger community.
It's how we put our shared aspirations – for ourselves and others – to work…
…to bring lasting, positive change to our city.
And so I'll end with another common sentiment at United Way.
This one I know you've heard before.
But it's also a very powerful sentiment.
I want to say it because what we do, we do because of you.
Because you care, you volunteer, you give, and you make the difference.
And I mean it from the bottom of my heart.
Without you, there would be no way.
Thank you very much.
