Mawlana Hazar Imam identified poverty alleviation as one of the highest priority areas for assisting the Jamat. In a speech made in Madagascar on November 27th, 2007, he stated:
“Our duty is to try to free people from poverty. And to me, poverty means being without shelter, without protection, without access to healthcare, education, or credit, and without hope of ever controlling one’s destiny. This means condemning one’s children and grandchildren to unacceptable living conditions. A voluntarist and innovative strategy is needed in order to break this chain of despair and total imprisonment”.
Poverty is defined by the following criteria:
- An individual/family is at or below the Statistics Canada Low-Income Cut-Off (LICO) for the region of residence
- The family has more than one vulnerability or barrier to improving its condition (e.g., inadequate shelter, health challenges)
- The family or members have the potential and capacity to improve their quality of life
- But, the family is unable to access resources to mitigate their vulnerabilities or barriers without institutional or external support
Edmonton’s Community Empowerment Program is a unique program that brings together seven boards and portfolios to address challenges in as many areas of quality of life that participating families are facing. These boards and portfolios include the Social Welfare Board as the lead board, followed by the Economic Planning Board, Health Board, Education Board, Settlement Portfolio, Youth and Sports Board and the Women’s Development Portfolio. When individuals and families enter the program, a plan is created with them about how to improve their quality of life in the short and long term, and they are assisted in the implementation of the plan and in accessing relevant internal and external community resources through a full-time paid social worker and volunteer mentors and family facilitators who provide them with ongoing support and guidance.
We have 75 families involved in the Community Empowerment Program, who are gaining assistance with various types of quality of life improvements. Among these families, 19 (consisting of 56 individuals) are in a state of ultra-poverty or complete deprivation. To put this into perspective: 87% of the families have absolutely no savings or rainy day fund, 88% of them include one or more members with major mental/physical health problems that limit their capacity for gainful employment, 58% of the men and 73% of the women among these families have no formal education, and upon entering the program, none had safe, affordable housing; some were homeless or evicted due to their inability to pay rising rental costs.
The Community Empowerment Program is making an urgent call to the Jamat for more people to step forward by coming to the ICARE desk and volunteering to be mentors and family facilitators. Volunteers serve as a support to participating families in implementing their action plans to improve their quality of life. Without the help of the entire Jamat, we cannot fulfill the objective of “breaking the chain of despair and total imprisonment” experienced by these families.
