Just Act: We are the Solution to Poverty

By Angie Peters

Poverty ended for Angie Peter’s
family in one generation because of the intervention of ordinary people who
cared. Just Act is an inspirational guide for people, businesses and community
organizations who are concerned about poverty but feel hopeless about their
ability to make any meaningful difference. Built upon the insights of people
with lived experience of poverty Just Act answers your questions, provides
inspirational true stories, informs about effective initiatives, and addresses
barriers to success. It then provides a step-by-step process to develop a
comprehensive one-year action plan that can transform lives for generations to
come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Castle Quay Books
• Release date: Apr 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9781998815180

Angie Peters

Angie Peters is an inspiring and collaborative leader in Toronto’s social sector serving the communities where she grew up. In 2003, she left her executive role in telecommunications to work towards the end of poverty. She founded ZOË Alliance, an international social enterprise, before joining Toronto’s Yonge Street Mission in 2013 as President and CEO. In 2022, she hosted a Poverty Hack-a-Thon that has since birthed a city-wide multi-sector collaboration that is creating trust, action and momentum to build communities where everyone can thrive.

Book preview

In the face of growing need around us, where do we start? Poverty is complex—but as Angie Peters explains, effective solutions can be simple when caring people act. Grounded in her years of experience in front-line ministry and informed by real-life examples of what works, Angie’s model enables caring people to find a cause they care about, come alongside others, and take action to make a difference. Even as a long-time humanitarian worker, I was inspired to rethink my own approaches. We don’t just need ‘experts’ but compassionate citizens who love their neighbours in need.

—Michael Messenger, President and CEO, World Vision Canada

"In Just Act, Angie Peters helps us to understand poverty through a human lens, how it impacts people, and why it is entrenched. But unlike most books on poverty, Just Act does not leave us there. Through inspirational stories, compelling examples, and research, Angie helps us understand ourselves and what each of us can do that would truly help people move out of poverty and fundamentally change our communities."

—Dr. Karyn Gordon, WSJ & USA Today Bestselling Author, Top #10 World’s TEDx Speaker (2022), and CEO, DK Leadership 

In today’s world, when it is easy for optimism to be drowned beneath a deluge of negative news, it is reassuring to know that there are businesses that provide hope. Businesses that provide a beacon of light in the dark and engage their employees to transform society for the better. This book shares stories of some of those businesses—and, as such, provides helpful inspiration to those who are prepared to seek a different way and change the world.

—Mark Hews, Group CEO, The Benefact Group

"Angie Peters’ dedication to her vision to end generational poverty is inspiring. She asks questions of and seeks truth from diverse people and uses that to inform her actions. She solicits perspectives and fresh thinking from subject matter experts across sectors to help us identify solutions to poverty. Her book Just Act is practical and action-oriented. A must-read for anyone in any sector interested in breaking down generational poverty."

—Ugo Bizzari CFA, Managing Partner and CEO, Hazelview Investments

"Just Act is a call to action with the objective of eradicating multi-generational poverty. Based on Angie’s 18 years of hard-won experience, the book is full of thought-provoking and practical steps that each of us can take to help this important objective. Angie recognizes that each of us have unique talents and skills and helps individuals and companies focus on real and worthwhile actions each of us can take."

—David Harris, President and CEO, Kinectrics

"Increasingly we are seeing or feeling the sting of poverty; that sting may be material or of the soul. Just Act illuminates a clear path forward, for those willing to make a difference in their life, and in the life of the community they reside in."

—Neil Heatherington, CEO, Daily Bread Food Bank

"With Just Act, Angie knowingly brings a distinct voice and clear insight to the multifaceted complexities of poverty. Without romanticizing it, she provides responsible and thoughtful responses as she shepherds readers through an insightful, practical, and vital discussion, with refreshing wisdom and humility."

—Tim Huff, Founding Director, Youth Unlimited’s Light Patrol Street Outreach

"For the corporate philanthropy practitioner, Just Act offers practical tips on how to build a community impact plan. Consideration of broader frameworks such as the UN SDG’s and community partner metrics and outcomes are just a few examples of helpful insights that are offered up through numerous business case studies within."

—Karen Soos, Director, ESG Reporting and Social Impact, Scotiabank

This book challenges the inclination to sometimes solve in solitude and instead, brings to life the importance of listening to people experiencing poverty. Angie has given us a book that can only come from someone who understands the needs of the community.

—Farah Mohamed, CEO, Prince’s Trust Canada

"This is not just a book; it is a toolbelt. Angie Peters cuts through the complexity of theory and brings us to the street level of a community problem. The lived experience stories are inspiring and innovative, demonstrating that our core disconnection is our prioritization of the individual over the community. She makes visible not just how profound change is possible, but that it is entirely accessible.

—Stacey Campbell, President and CEO, Prison Fellowship Canada

Curious about interrupting the cycle of poverty? Believe in the power of people with lived experience to drive change? Dive into these inspiring stories of interrupting the cycle of poverty and deciding to act to end poverty. This is an indispensable practical guide for communities of faith and service who want to recommit to human dignity for all.

—Pastor Peter Noteboom, General Secretary, The Canadian Council of Churches

"Just Act inspires individuals and organizations to integrate actionable measures enabling each one to set tangible goals to re-imagine philanthropy not as an event but as a lifestyle. Each action point propels us forward to eradicate poverty in our lifetime. It is not just a dream but a reality for each one of us to step into and invite others to join us on the journey to end generational poverty once and for all."

—Alana Walker-Carpenter, CEO, Intriciti

Think of this book as a kick-starter for those who care deeply about tackling poverty but don’t know where to start. Peters addresses some of the misbeliefs preventing personal involvement, clearing the way for starting small and where we are at. Written from a Christian perspective, the principles of action, supported by real-life examples, will motivate anyone who wants to make a difference. Bravo!

—David Guretzki PhD, President and CEO, The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada

JUST ACT

Copyright ©2024 Angie Peters

Illustrations by Tim Casswell of Creative Connections.

978-1-998815-17-3 Soft Cover

978-1-998815-18-0 E-book

Published by:

Castle Quay Books

Burlington, Ontario

Tel: [phone]

E-mail: [e-mail] | www.castlequaybooks.com

Edited by Marina Hofman Willard PhD

Cover and book interior design by Burst Impressions

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form without prior written permission of the publishers.

For Library of Congress Cataloging Information please contact the publisher

For Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Information please contact the publisher

Dedication

In loving memory of Barbara Diane Fralick (December 14, 1941 to November 13, 2000).

With deep gratitude for my family, Arthur, Ben, and Grace—you are my home, my heart, and my joy.

Dedicated to Melissa, Robert, Lesha, Malcolm, and Debra for your courageous leadership and commitment to sharing your experience to help others. You continue to teach and inspire us every day.

Foreword

We all met Angie through the Poverty Hack-a-Thon or the #HackPoverty working groups. She had asked her team at YSM to identify single parents who could form a Single Parent Advisory and Review Panel to help design and lead an event with people from around the city to identify solutions that could really change things for people like us.

We had never been asked to do anything like this before. People don’t usually think of us as having something valuable to contribute, but Angie saw that we were the people who best understood what it was like to live in poverty and for that reason, we were the best people to have at the table to guide any efforts to change things.

It was exciting, scary, and a game-changer for us. Taking us out of our comfort zones in a good way. Speaking to leaders and sharing our perspectives, having them heard … really heard, and incorporated into the work that we were all doing together.

The goals of the #HackPoverty work and this book are to answer people’s questions about poverty, to help them see what they can do that would have a significant impact, and know how to get started. In our early work together, we realized that there are many good people who want to help, and they just don’t know how to get started.

It has been amazing to build relationships with the leaders around the table, to get to know them better, and to be a part of a group like this that really wants to get to know us better, understand our challenges, and dig into finding solutions to complex problems. We know everyone values the expertise that we bring to the table and how it can help ensure that what we come up with will actually have the intended impact.

We have seen people be amazed at what they learn about the social system, even angered when they hear the on-the-ground impact in our lives, and just how dehumanizing and discouraging it can be for us to try to make progress toward our goals. It has been a powerful experience of building understanding, trust, and mutual respect.

As you read this book, you will learn a little bit about Angie’s life experience, and we think this is why she has been able to engage such a diverse group of leaders. She gets it, and she believes in all of us. She draws out our collective goodwill, and our ability to design good initiatives and to get them done. She is an empathetic, fierce, and gentle bulldozer, and nothing is going to stop her, because she cares.

We are involved because we want to use our voices to help others who are experiencing poverty. We want to see real change, and our experience of the #HackPoverty work has shown us that if we work together, we really can do this. It is amazing what each individual in the groups has contributed to the overall work.

We highly recommend this book to you if you are interested in making a difference for people experiencing poverty where you are. It is not your usual book on poverty. It is invitational, respectful, hopeful, practical, informative, and action oriented. We think you will like it, and we know that you really could help someone like us ensure that their children never have the same challenges that we have had.

Lesha, Robert, Melissa, and Debra

Introduction

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

—Mahatma Gandhi

Between the first step, which is to come close and allow yourself to be struck by what you see, and the third step, which is to act concretely to heal and repair, there is an essential intermediate stage: to discern and to choose.

—Pope Francis

"If we are bold, love strikes away the chains

of fear from our souls."

—Maya Angelou

Over many years working in poverty reduction locally and internationally, I have had hundreds of conversations with people from all walks in life who truly care. These are people who are troubled by the disproportionate growth of poverty for certain members of our communities and parts of our world, and really want to do something that will change this reality.

The problem is that they look at the complexity and just don’t know how to get started. And where they have tried to help in some way, they are left uncertain of whether they have made any difference.

Where does one start? This world is in a difficult state, characterized by disunity, political polarization, a rapidly rising cost of living, income disparity, inadequate health care resources, and rising crime. We hear all about this through sound bites and statistics delivered via algorithms that fail to fully inform us about the root causes of these complex challenges, leaving us to form our opinions and strategies without good information.

What’s worse is that, in all this noise, we lose sight of the fact that as human beings we actually hold many values and societal goals in common.

Increasingly, I have found myself asking: how do we turn this around? How do we come together and fully leverage our collective knowledge and resources toward these shared goals? I really think we can change the game if we work together.

Before I moved into poverty reduction work almost two decades ago, I worked in telecommunications sales and marketing. I’ve observed that businesses are much better than the social sector at helping people know what they could do.

Sure, we share tragic stories that make you sad—but you still don’t know what to do. Then we pile on statistics that overwhelm you—and you still don’t know what you can do. You’re left feeling sad, overwhelmed, and hopeless. This is not good.

There is no reason to be overwhelmed and hopeless; poverty is not really that complex. It is the human experience of not having enough financial resources to care for oneself and one’s family with dignity. The measure we use at my organization in Toronto is the Low-Income Measure After Taxes, a number calculated by the government that is based on family size that is intended to capture the amount of income that is the threshold for poverty. Simply put, people with less income than this number are those who are experiencing poverty. In my city, 20 percent of our population experiences poverty.

There are many reasons people end up experiencing poverty, and this book explores them, addressing their causes and the ways in which people are able to move out of poverty.

The book also unpacks the different forms of poverty and brings clarity to what we can do. When I refer to the goal of my organization and the people that we are working with in Toronto, I speak of ending generational poverty. This does not mean to imply that we will not always need support in our society for individuals who are temporarily ill or lose their jobs. This form of episodic poverty will always exist. Generational poverty is the entrenched position of poverty experienced by multiple generations in a family that could work, but other barriers in their lives and the social system itself serve to keep them literally trapped in poverty. I know the word trapped is a strong word, and this book demonstrates through real stories how this can be the case. Poverty such as that breaks our hearts, and I believe we can end this form of generational poverty.

That is why I’ve written this book—to help people like you get started in making a difference. The stories in the book demonstrate that if we all just act on what we can do, collectively we can make a difference on pressing issues. (That’s why the title of this book is Just Act.) We all have abilities and resources we can give that would make a difference; our own acts that would bring us one step closer to a just society.

I also want you to know that people can and do change, even people we might think are too broken, too far gone to be able to turn things around, people who don’t seem to want to change, people we might suspect of gaming the system. People like Barbara.

Barbara was the oldest of eleven children. Her father was an alcoholic who abused the girls and boys in different ways; it was not a happy or safe home. With money being tight, as the oldest, Barbara was taken out of school where she had been a smart student and was sent to work to help support the family.

But Barbara was bright, and she loved children. Despite her limited education, she managed to work, helping the family financially, and essentially raise her younger siblings who fared much better than the older ones, who experienced the same struggles as Barbara.

Barbara was desperate for a happy home and children of her own. She made a few choices that were not ideal for her or anyone else, resulting in three children she loved dearly, each one with a different father. Barbara’s past took its toll on her: she struggled with depression and agoraphobia, never leaving the home. The family got by on social assistance in subsidized housing. Barbara made a couple of attempts at having a life partner and this helped the family financially, but Barbara was the constant parent to her children.

Barbara wanted to give her kids everything, even things that she could not afford. One of those was piano lessons for her oldest daughter. This was where Barbara’s story began to change. The piano teacher saw Barbara’s situation and decided to get to know her. The teacher invested time and care in Barbara, helping her process her pain and find healing in her faith. Barbara began to hope again.

Shortly after this, Barbara found a subsidized apartment in a new neighborhood for her family. There, a second person who played a key role in changing Barbara’s life trajectory came in: Pat, the mother of a boy who was friends with Barbara’s son, saw Barbara’s difficulties but also saw her strengths. Pat got to know Barbara and helped her think about a career path that could work for her. She helped Barbara sign up for accounting and bookkeeping classes, and when