BC is one of only two provinces in Canada without a poverty reduction plan, despite the fact that our poverty levels are among the highest in Canada, especially among children (18.6% of our kids kids live in poverty!) What can we do about it? Yesterday I attended a meeting regarding the Port Hardy Poverty Reduction Strategy to find out.

One thing that communities, including Port Hardy, are doing to help is creating Poverty Reduction Strategies at the local level. The Union of British Columbia Municipalities, in 2012, recommended seven pilot communities to the Ministry of Children and Family Development to develop strategies and share best practices with the Ministry, to be shared with the rest of the province. So, as part of those efforts, we have a community facilitator in Port Hardy who has been meeting with people and setting up the meeting for us to talk about how to develop our strategy.

At this gathering it was clear that the issue of poverty is a priority for many people in the community, with representatives from Port Hardy council, the RCMP, the Kwakiutl First Nation, the Gwa'sala-'Nakwaxda'xw Nations, The Ministry of Children and Family Development, Strong Start, North Island Crisis & Counselling Centre, North Island College, the Salvation Army, our local Harvest Food Bank, our local Native Friendship Centre, the Mt. Waddington Health Network, Vancouver Island Health Authority, AND North Island Employment Foundation Society! Even with that many people sitting around the table, we came up with many more who help people in poverty and/or should be helping create the plan.

This was an interesting look at just how many different people, organizations, programs etc. take on a small piece of the poverty puzzle. I can really see how, without a shared strategy, it is difficult to combine efforts to make the biggest difference for the community members who need support. I am looking forward to the work of this group, and encourage you to look up poverty reduction efforts in your own community!

Here are some sample plans, mentioned at the meeting, that might inspire you:

• Revelstoke
• Surrey

Also, take a look at the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition's website to learn more about this issue.

Hopefully you've checked out my notes from day one of the Centre for Civic Governance's conference. Here are the notes from the second day of the conference:

As a first-time councillor for the District of Port Hardy, I always look forward to opportunities to hang out with other local government folks and learn about cool things happening in their communities.

This is my second year attending the Centre for Civic Governance's annual workshop, and I have heard so much positive feedback from others who have been coming for way longer - great networking opportunities, fabulous keynote speakers (last year we had Jamie Biggar from LeadNow, this year we get Raffi!) and tons of well-paced, information-packed workshops.

This year's theme is Food for Thought: Growing Local Economies, Strengthening Local Leadership. Session topics range from Food System Planning to Culinary Tourism to Fossil Fuel Divestment to Indigenous Food Sovereignty to "Who's Not Voting?" - a look at how to get more people out to the municipal vote. 

I find that whenever councillors go to these kinds of workshops, along with UBCM, AVICC, and FCM, we always come home full to the brim with great ideas which don't always get passed along to the folks at home. So, in the interest of sharing information and good ideas, I'm going to be posting my notes from the sessions I attend. Sketchnoting conferences is a rising trend, so armed with tools from yesterday's workshop, hopefully they'll be visually appealing notes as well, as I practice this new skill :)

-JH

What happens when you give a room full of community planners markers, pens, and walls full of paper? Total magic!

Every year around this time, the CCP Mentors (see my earlier blog post about what that means) get together for our wrap-up session, to talk about our mentoring experiences in the previous year. A couple of meetings ago, we went "you know, if we're trying to pass skills on to other communities, it would be really nice to have some support in our own skill-building..." and, since the lovely AANDC folks who work in the CCP program are so awesome (thanks Colette!), they hooked us up with TWO FULL DAYS of training at this years' wrap-up! 

On day one we had my dear friend and famed facilitator Aftab Erfan (check out this article that we co-wrote) teach our group a bit about Deep Democracy, a facilitation methodology that was honed in post-apartheid South Africa to help people work together, despite legitimate grievances and trauma. There is a lot of applicability of this method to First Nations, who also have unequal footing in many decision-making groups, as well as the lasting intergenerational trauma from too many things to list here.

I would do total injustice to the depth of this style of facilitation to try and describe any more here, but if you are interested please do some more digging of your own. Suffice it to say that the day was enriching, challenging (in the right way) and ended with each of us mentors, in pairs, saying as many lovely things as we could about our partner. How wonderful would the world be if we did that all the time!

On day two we had Rosanna von Sacken take us through the basics of using visual tools to enhance meetings. We learned everything from what kind of paper (4' rolls of 20lb bond) and markers (Neulands for big paper) to use, to how to design our own templates to use in meetings. Take a look at some of my notebook pages from this session - makes sense that it would be easier to describe what we learned in pictures than in words!

Here are some graphic recording resources for those interested in diving deeper into this topic:

• Afab's Graphic Recording Portfolio
  
• Rosanna's Graphic Recording Portfolio
  
• The Centre for Graphic Facilitation
  
• International Forum of Visual Practitioners
  
• The Change Handbook: Visual Recording and Graphic Facilitation
  
• Image Think
  
  

As community planners we are so often on the front lines in our communities, drawing out conversations, resolving conflict, working late hours - what a gift to have these couple of days to "fill the cup" with some new tools. More importantly, though, we strengthened our relationships with each other as mentors, because really the beauty of the mentorship model lies in the relationships, not the deliverables - the "magic in-between stuff" that we bring to the communities we work with, and to the work we do with each other. 

Do you use graphics in your own note-taking or the way you do meetings? I would love to hear your tips!

-JH