Storied Lives: Shifting Perspectives on Poverty Initiative Featured in The Conversation

An anti-poverty research collaboration between CESI, the Live Work Well Research Centre, and the Guelph and Wellington Task Force for Poverty Elimination has been featured by The Conversation.

The article is written by Leah Levac, an associate professor at the University of Guelph and acting director of the Live Work Well Research Centre, and Jillian Crocker, a research assistant at the Live Work Well Research Centre. The article discusses the renewed pleas for action by anti-poverty campaigners in light of the pandemic, inflation, and the repeated failures of the Ontario government to address deep poverty. Targeting the systemic factors that keep people in poverty, known as “legislated poverty”, will require novel efforts by the government and prioritization of lived expertise. Amplifying the voices of those impacted by poverty is the focus of the research collaboration highlighted by the article.

As part of this collaboration, a four-part podcast series, Storied Lives: Shifting Perspectives on Poverty, has been created to explore stories of poverty. Each episode features a fictional story based on true accounts of people in poverty paired with an interview with a notable guest, bringing together experts, scholars, and those with lived experience. The series emphasizes the importance of an intersectional response to “unlegislating” poverty and informing services and policy.

Learn more about the initiative and read the feature by The Conversation.