NO POVERTY has been identified as the second most relevant SDG in our area

When the Community Foundation for Lennox & Addington began the research for Lennox & Addington’s Vital Signs Connecting Communities 2019 we knew that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals needed to be an integral part of the process. We also suspected that the issues of Poverty, Hunger and Sustainable Communities would resonate with members of our communities.

According to the 2016 Census of Canada, Lennox and Addington County has a lower poverty rate, based on the Low Income Measure, than the Province of Ontario as a whole. The distribution of people who are experiencing poverty throughout our County is uneven. People in the north and people in the west of the County are more likely to experience poverty. The northern portion of Lennox and Addington is sparsely populated creating a challenge for the delivery of social services and poverty mitigating strategies.

Poverty has many dimensions including unemployment, social exclusion, food insecurity, inadequate housing, access to education and a wide assortment of wellness issues. Raising individuals and families out of poverty requires time and collaborative efforts. Most often, an individual working to raise themselves out of poverty will be attempting to resolve multiple causes of their poverty for which the solutions have differing timelines.

At the time of the last census, in Lennox and Addington, one child in ten was living in a household that falls into the Low-Income Measure.

A Local Target for `No Poverty’ developed by the United Nations is: by 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions. The Community Foundation for Lennox & Addington will be tracking progress on this issue as we conduct future Vital Signs Projects. We aim is to produce a Vital Signs report every two years.

If you are interested in helping to establish a Poverty Mitigation Endowment fund that will put anti-poverty money to work in perpetuity, give us a call.