Engaging Businesses in Local Efforts to Reduce Poverty (Part 4)

Resource Type: Audio Seminar || Speaker: John Weiser
John Weiser

The 4th of a four-part series, John Weiser considers effective tactics for leveraging business and markets, creating employment opportunities and recognizing the realities faced by hourly wage workers.

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.
audio/mpeg iconengaging_businesses_in_local_efforts_4.mp3
Play Count: 3
Downloads: 667

iPhone/Smartphone users may download the full audio here

Take the Seminar!

All across Canada, communities are creating mult-isector collaborations or networks to develop long-term, comprehensive approaches to reducing poverty. The local business community is a natural partner in these efforts:

  • As Community Citizens: businesses can contribute financial, technical and human resources to community initiatives (e.g. community volunteers, grants to poverty reduction projects, joint marketing campaigns). 
  • As Employers: businesses can train and hire unemployed or underemployed workers, pay good wages, and offer supplementary employment benefits (e.g. child care, flexible work schedules). 
  • As Purchasers: businesses can buy goods and services from local enterprises that employ unemployed or underemployed workers (e.g. subcontract to a community training enterprise). 
  • As Producers: businesses can strive to ensure they provide quality services for low-income communities (e.g. financial services, housing, transportation). In order to tap into the enormous potential of the private sector to significantly reduce poverty, member communities in Vibrant Communities strive to develop a better understanding of how to build the case for business involvement and the specific strategies and techniques for engaging and sustaining businesses in poverty reduction work over the long term.

In this final session of the Engaging Businesses series, we return to the question: How can we best engage and sustain private sector involvement in community-based efforts to reduce poverty?

This leads to a discussion that centres on ground-breaking research by the Ford Foundation and focuses on two areas of central concern:

  • Outlining the steps and finding helpful tools for building a case for business involvement in poverty reduction initiatives
  • Identifying the capacities that poverty reduction networks and community-based organizations need to develop in order to effectively work with the private sector on poverty reduction initiatives

To assist in the discussion, we meet again with John Weiser, co-founder of Brody • Weiser • Burns, a leader in the field of business involvement in community issues, and lead author of the Ford Foundation’s report, Part of the Solution: Leveraging Business and Markets for Low-Income People, and other insightful resources on the topic of corporate engagement.

Access Podcast Highlights:

Links:
Tags: