Thank you, Chair and members of this committee, for the opportunity to present to you today some ideas and recommendations for your consideration as you conduct this national study on poverty reduction strategies. It's our hope that this will inform the national strategy on poverty reduction that this country so greatly needs and that this government certainly seems to be so greatly committed to.
I know you've already heard from some of our partners in Hamilton. Laura Cattari was here from the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction. Shortly you'll hear from another great partner, Alan Whittle from the largest social service agency in Hamilton, Good Shepherd. In Hamilton we've known for decades the importance of collaborating with partners when it comes to getting meaningful results in reducing poverty. The Social Planning and Research Council, or the SPRC, where I've worked for 15 years on poverty reduction initiatives—15 of the 50 years that we've existed in Hamilton, in fact—has always been committed to getting the broadest range of stakeholders at the table in order to address these complex or wicked social issues in our community.
This is where I think I can make our first recommendation to you. An essential element of any successful poverty reduction strategy will be to work collaboratively across all sectors, with unsuspecting partners. My colleague Sandra didn't mention that in London, the Sisters of St. Joseph are among the key partners in their poverty reduction strategy. To me, they are one example of some of the unsuspecting partners we don't always have at the table.
When it comes to addressing poverty, one of the first voices that must be at every table, as you've heard, is that of lived experience. While social planners and other professionals are called the experts in this area, that is not the case. We know it's truly the first voice of lived experience that's most needed to reform our policies and practices when it comes to poverty reduction. Listening deeply to those voices can build the empathy those of us without the lived experience need in order to bring about that response to people with dignity and humanity, despite their low-income reality.
Here's an opportunity to make a second recommendation, which is to ensure that any poverty reduction efforts are informed by first-voice experience. To that end, I introduce to you Alana Baltzar. She is the co-chair of HOPE, that's Hamilton organizing for poverty elimination. She edits a newspaper in her local neighbourhood. She is a graduate of a private college. She has not done well by that, so there's another recommendation to consider, around education in these private colleges. Alana is here to offer you the benefit of her insight.