What are the critical elements required to meaningfully tackle the roots of poverty and advance community wealth building in Toronto? Answering this question has been the key motivating factor behind our work alongside community partners like yourselves,activists, local leaders, and residents with local and lived expertise. In this panel series, we are exploring how collective action and public policy can work in tandem to bolster one another and looking at successful movements, programs and initiatives that are underway and promising ones that are still being designed.
Join Social Planning Toronto and Toronto Community Benefits Network as we explore what Inclusive Economic Development can mean for Toronto. This is a key time for the City as Toronto develops its own Inclusive Economic Development (IED) strategy and launches its five-year Action Plan for Toronto’s Economy. At this critical moment for Toronto, how do we ensure that equity, shared prosperity and building community wealth are at the core of these plans? How do we ensure that economic activity benefits everyone in our communities while addressing systemic barriers and building economic justice? In this panel, you’ll hear from experts who have been at the forefront of advancing IED initiatives and policies in Toronto and beyond, as they share the solutions needed to realize the promise of Inclusive economic development and why it matters to you and your community.
Speakers will include:
Sahar Ghafouri is the Sr Director of Operations at North York Harvest in Toronto. Her background and experience is in the environmental, social services, food security and arts sectors of the non-profit world in Toronto. Her work at NYH touches on the intersections of social planning, food security, health, placemaking, and economic justice.
Rosemarie Powell is the Executive Director of the Toronto Community Benefits Network, co-founder of the Canadian Building Diversity Institute and Owner of Big on Green Property Management. She has been a passionate advocate for social, economic, and environmental justice for over 20 years and has advanced equitable approaches to policy development and implementation at various levels of government. Her community engagement and environmental advocacy work earned several awards for leadership and imagination.
Building on TCBN’s initial success of negotiating Ontario’s first Community Benefits Framework for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, Rosemarie has forged strategic partnerships among community, labour and industry leaders across Canada and positioned the coalition as a key systems intermediary to unlock thousands of good jobs in construction and hundreds of millions in local and social procurement opportunities through investment in public infrastructure and urban development for equity deserving groups.
Sergio Montero is Associate Professor of Geography & Planning at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, where he is also inaugural director of the Institute for Inclusive Economies and Sustainable Livelihoods (IIESL), a research center devoted to the exploration, imagining and sharing of alternative economic development strategies. The IIESL is founded on the understanding that transitioning to sustainable futures requires rethinking conventional ideals of economic growth and development; valuing the diverse economic practices that are essential for sustaining life; recognizing the interconnected relationships between economic activity and local and regional contexts; and redefining the role of the state and policy in creating economic opportunities, shared prosperity, and well-being within planetary boundaries.
Sergio Montero’s recent research has focused on the politics of urban and regional planning; on the global circulation of policy ideas and urban experiments, particularly around sustainable urban mobility; and on the relationship between governance and local economic development, especially in Latin America. He holds a PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley (USA) and a BA in Economics from Universidad de Granada (Spain).
If you require accommodation to attend the event, contact [email protected].
Cohosted by Social Planning Toronto and Toronto Community Benefits Network.