News from Medicine Hat

MAY 16, 2012
Medicine Hat News

Community Foundation joins

forces to fight poverty

STACEY LEE

The newly re-branded Community Foundation of Southeastern Alberta has partnered with a group of organizations to uncover the causes of local poverty, and help children pursue their interests at the Public Library.

The foundation announced a partnership with the United Way and the Community Housing Society Tuesday, which saw a total of $40,000 granted to the committee charged with identifying the causes of homelessness in the city.

As part of a new initiative, which will see $10,000 given out twice each year, the Community Foundation has matched the $8,500 donated by the United Way, while the Community Housing Society chipped in the remaining $23,000, in order to fund the necessary research.

"This is two-fold. One part is determining what poverty looks like, what the cost of poverty is and who is effected by it. The second part is determining the living wage. We want to research that, find out why and see if we can't address the situation," said the Housing Society's Robin Miller.

With Medicine Hat having the highest concentration of low wage earners in the province the city's roundtable committee will go right to task, hiring an independent company to conduct the research and compile a detailed report. "We do know that there are working poor in Medicine Hat... we need to determine a proper living wage for this community, so that individuals can go to work, work one job, and make a living at it instead of working three or four different low paying jobs," says Holly Stadnicki of the United Way.

AEPA note: this news article was shortened due to length