Below the Line

In February, I went live-on-air on CKUW with two special guests. I was joined by Dr. Lorna Turnbull, chair of Basic Income Manitoba, and Caryn Birch, director of Education and Training at RaY. We discussed Dauphin’s Mincome project, the importance of a grade 12 education to end the cycle of poverty, and what more can be done by policy-makers and society to lower child poverty rates.

In this episode I sit down with Diane Roussin, project manager at Winnipeg Boldness Project, to chat about the work the organization is doing in the Point Douglas neighbourhood in Winnipeg's North End. Winnipeg Boldness Project is a social innovation process that explores new ideas for addressing early childhood outcomes in Point Douglas. Roussin talks about the crucial role the community plays in identifying and addressing social issues in the neighbourhood and how the project works in the framework of a social lab. Roussin also chats about the prototypes, or ideas, the community has implemented like the Indigenous Doula Initiative: Pre and Post Pregnancy Care and the Baby Basket initiative.

The team at Here and Now: The Winnipeg Plan to End Youth Homelessness chat about the how hard it is to be homeless, the latest Winnipeg Street Census and how aging out of Child and Family Services care leaves many youth on the brink of homelessness.

During the 1970s, Manitoba implemented a basic income social project to determine the impacts a guaranteed annual income would have on the working poor. The experiment, better known as Mincome, was conducted in two test sites: Winnipeg and Dauphin. The results were largely untouched for 30 years. On this episode, Dr. Lorna Turnbull, chair of Basic Income Manitoba, discusses how a guaranteed income can help families, especially women and children, living in poverty.

Caryn Birch, director of Education and Training at RaY talks about education as a poverty reduction strategy and how she created the Level Up! program to give youth the tools they need to access education and employment.

Cassandra, Victor and Keagan Golondrina talk about living in Gilbert Park, a Manitoba Housing complex, for 11 year and what it was like living and growing up in poverty. Victor and Keagan discuss the importance of positive role models in their lives and the impact the Boys and Girls Clubs of Winnipeg had on them growing up.

Dr. Marni Brownell, lead research scientist at the University of Manitoba's Centre for Health Policy talks about toxic stress and child development, why low-income is linked to poorer health outcomes, and the success and shotcomings of Manitoba's Prenatal Benefit.

I sat down with Molly McCracken, director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Manitoba Office, to chat all about poverty reduction policies. She discusses pros and cons of these policies, and ways all levels of governments, including municipal governments, have a role in poverty reduction. She also criticizes Manitoba's outdated poverty reduction strategy and Canada's newly implemented poverty line.

Below the Line is a series dedicated to exploring Manitoba's high child poverty rates. Learn more about what to expect in the next nine episodes.