Perfect. Thank you for humouring us. Saint John always likes to be just a little bit difficult. That's how you know we're in the room.
I'm with Vibrant Communities, as Monica mentioned. Vibrant Communities is part of a national network. The McConnell Family Foundation decided a while back that if we kept waiting for government to fix poverty, then we were in for a long wait, so we decided to try something different. What's really interesting is that we're coming full circle now because government, the federal government in particular, is coming to see us.
At Vibrant Communities in Saint John, poverty reduction means that we have a comprehensive strategy that involves the business community, it involves the significant voice of people who live in poverty themselves, the non-profit sector, and government. So we've done a really great job of engaging the municipal government and the provincial government, and in fact, in the last year and a half, both of them have begun to significantly contribute to the local poverty reduction strategy, financially as well as in other policy and programming changes.
There are a couple of specific recommendations we would like to leave you with.
Look at how we can help folks who are in our communities get to a place where they're self-sufficient. How do we help those who've been in cyclical and generational poverty to transition out of that? It's taken generations to get there and it's going to take some real concerted effort to get out. We believe that comprehensive supports and programming are necessary. We have these amazing assets in our community, but they're largely untapped.
One example we're seeing in Saint John right now is that we're a bit protected from the economic downturn, and we still have new economic opportunities. But we have a large body of individuals in Saint John who are not ready to work or who have never worked. Rather than bringing migrant workers in, we want to focus energy on helping these individuals get a firm foundation so they can engage in some of the wealth and prosperity we're going to see in our community. Again, the supports and the approach need to be integrated. All of the partners need to be working together, and it's one of the key messages. We need leadership from all of the sectors and they need to be thinking in an integrated way. We can't cut off fingers to spite our hand. We still see funding decisions and policy and program decisions that work really well for one sector but actually compromise the needs of another.
One of the other important pieces--and this is a big priority for the Business Community Anti-Poverty Initiative--is focusing on breaking the cycle of poverty. We do that by investing heavily in children and youth. What are the supports and the programs that we need in place to level the playing field so that all children, regardless of which family they were born to, have equal likelihood of success coming out the other end? That would be a comprehensive early intervention program or child care strategy--you've probably heard that one before, a national child care strategy. How do we make sure that the early years are as productive and helpful as possible?
Once children are in school, how do we make sure that it's a learning environment where children can thrive? We don't want to just focus on their having food, which is really important, but food isn't enough to ensure success. When they're into high school, where there's lots of transition and difficulty, what supports do we have in place for youth and for older kids? And how do we make sure they can go on to further education if that's their interest?
An extension of that is that should the system fail them and they become adults who have limited levels of education, how do we eliminate some of the barriers that stop them from working? One of the issues we've seen consistently and are addressing is the GED requirement. High school or other equivalency is required for almost every job, and all government jobs at every level. But are those the skills that are really required to do those jobs? We found in a lot of cases that there are a lot of skills people have that match really well with the job, regardless of the piece of paper. So again, there are some built-in barriers that really hurt us.
The last thing I'd like to leave you with--and I think it's the contribution of Vibrant Communities Saint John to the poverty file--is the focus on neighbourhoods. We looked at our city and said, “What's happening? Where is poverty?” We found there were five neighbourhoods where there were very high levels of poverty. Forty per cent of the people who lived in these neighbourhoods lived in poverty. And what you have essentially, although it's not a pretty word, is a ghetto, with lack of opportunity, lack of role modelling. So our real emphasis is on how we can evolve and reinvent neighbourhoods that have become, over time, ghettos because of mismanagement and poor planning.
Most important, how do the residents and those who live in poverty drive the change themselves? We need to make sure that the voices of people who are living in poverty are heard in all that we do. They're involved in our leadership, in creating the solutions, and in informing policy-makers.
If I can leave you with one thing, it would be that the voice of people who live in poverty needs to be front and centre.
Thank you.