This text is part of the special section Philanthropy
In order to no longer work in a vacuum, Centraide of Greater Montreal and its partners have launched a major initiative to tackle the effects as well as the causes of poverty in Montreal.
“It’s a small revolution,” says Rotem Ayalon, deputy director of the Collective Impact Project (PIC). Launched in 2015 at the initiative of Centraide of Greater Montreal and the Lucie and André Chagnon Foundation, the project brings together nine foundations.
“The reflection was to see how we could, beyond individual efforts, get to work collectively to tackle the problems,” says Claude Pinard, President and CEO of Centraide of Greater Montreal, the organization who acts as the operator of the PIC. All of the foundations have put $23 million on the table over six years.
Three strategic partners are also collaborating on the project, namely the City of Montreal, the Montreal Regional Public Health Department and the Montreal Coalition of Neighborhood Tables. “This is an unprecedented collaboration, by the type of work that was done, the scope of the partners around the table, the amounts invested, but also because we invited the neighborhoods to experiment, to innovate, to accelerate the change,” said Mr. Pinard.
A bottom-up approach
Unlike fragmented approaches, in which each foundation finances one project or another, the PIC wanted to promote a common vision and coherence in the fight against poverty. “We wanted to make sure that all the players were working together, and not in a vacuum, to increase the impact of the work to combat poverty and social exclusion,” says Ms.me Ayallon.
In a real approach bottom-up “, the adopted vision calls into question traditional power relations: “Foundations find their relevance when they participate in the solutions, without expecting that their impact will be entirely on the shoulders of community organizations,” believes Mr. Pinard. .
But above all, it was the neighborhoods that defined their priorities for action and their strategies. “Some neighborhoods wanted to have access to pure and free funds, which are not directed,” explains Isabel Heck, collective impact advisor and researcher associated with the Center for Research on Social Innovations. “It’s really a change of posture,” adds the anthropologist.
Beyond money, the PIC relies on support for communities and the strengthening of local capacities. Community counselors from Centraide of Greater Montreal supported the neighborhoods, among other things, in implementing a culture of self-assessment. Almost all neighborhoods have rolled out assessment procedures over the past six years.
Each district has its own challenges
Projects have been deployed in 17 districts. Each neighborhood decided which file to work on: food, housing, housing, infrastructure improvement, educational success, employment, etc.
But even when tackling the same file, the approaches were very different. In the West Island, the PIC supported the project “A roof for all: the workshops of the West Island”, which aims to recognize the lack of affordable housing in this district. “It contributed to the city of Pointe-Claire creating a fund for social housing and putting the issue on the table,” explains Ms.me heck.
In the Côte-des-Neiges district, where the problem of unsanitary housing is glaring, the actors decided instead to mobilize the tenants to make them aware of their rights, while in Pointe-aux-Trembles, we chosen to provide community support to co-op residents. “That’s the beauty of a non-oriented fund: we work on what is most important to settle in the neighborhood”, summarizes Mme heck.
Continue to build relationships
The pandemic has of course upset all walks of life, and several projects have had to be remodeled. Fortunately, all the work done upstream paid off. The Concertation en développement social de Verdun, for example, wanted to strengthen the community’s ability to work collectively. “Thanks to the work of the PIC, the actors were able, during the pandemic, to make decisions quickly and to meet the crying needs, especially in food”, says Ms.me Ayallon.
Given the success of this approach, a second phase of the PIC will be launched on April 27. Relationships between community and city stakeholders will continue to grow, but the next step is to bring the provincial government to the table. “There is now this will and this collective awareness in philanthropy that we will get there together,” argues Claude Pinard.
Because the job is far from over; after the COVID-19 pandemic, runaway inflation will test communities. “It’s going to be a special year,” he concludes.