| Summary |
From 1993-1996, a coalition of community groups and low-income residents in Waterloo Region, Canada, showed how communities can find ways to help long-term welfare recipients identify and create employment opportunities in a rapidly changing modern economy.
Before the Waterloo Region Opportunities Planning (OP) program was launched on April 1, 1993 the regional economy had been devastated by a crippling recession that drove unemployment levels and welfare rolls upward and left many people doubting they could ever escape from poverty. When OP concluded nearly four years later, though, it had helped more than 1,100 long-term welfare recipients find jobs or start their own businesses.
OP involved more than a dozen independent community agencies and provided employment, self-employment and life skills counselling services at 18 sites in some of the most isolated and disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Waterloo Region. Studies showed that OP participants returned to work much faster than clients of government employment programs, and at a much lower cost.
OP was successful because of its synergistic mix of agency partnerships, its democratic management team that gave a strong voice to program clients, and its unique approach to career planning that helped clients overcome the personal barriers that typically prevent them from returning to work.
OP provided a model of effective and humane welfare reform for all of Canada, and became a symbol of hope for thousands of unemployed people in Waterloo Region. With its emphasis on community partnerships, the program helped create a more cohesive NGO sector in the region and enhanced the capacity of community agencies to deliver services.
OP will have lasting benefits in Waterloo Region and across Canada. The program became the inspiration for Opportunities 2000, an ambitious campaign launched in 1997 to help Waterloo Region achieve the lowest level of poverty in Canada by the year 2000, using many of the same cooperative community strategies employed by Opportunities Planning.
|
Contacts |
|
| |