Putting a face on poverty
570 News
The latest in Opportunities Waterloo Region’s “Community Conversations” series focused on the issues of prosperity and inequality. The agency says the more prosperous a community becomes, the more difficult it gets for a poor person to afford the standard of living.
“When people are in a prosperous region they can’t afford the housing when the prices go up, they can’t afford the leisure activities and some of the cultural offerings in the community,” explains Cheryl Ives, Manager of Community Engagement at Opportunities. “And that just makes it feel that much worse to be in that positions.
James Milway from the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity was the keynote speaker for today’s event at Victoria Park. He addressed high risk groups for poverty, including high school dropouts, recent immigrants and single parents.
Ives says we have to take a hard look at the data available at the provincial level and use it to think strategically about how we attack poverty in our community.
More than 47,000 people in Waterloo Region are living in poverty.
