ANC Clearinghouse

Our future success and the quality of life in our city depends upon our collective ability to build strong and resilient neighbourhoods. Because when we believe we can make a difference, we often do. Working together, we will build stronger and more resilient neighbourhoods that make Toronto a great city.

Our Building Strong Neighbourhoods strategy is targeting funding, building local residents' engagement with their neighbourhood, establishing community hubs, and building the capacity of local agencies, community leaders and residents. Torontonians are willing to put their money where their hearts are: by providing millions of dollars to respond to the human needs of neighbourhoods. At the very heart of this work—and the starting point for all of United Way's neighbourhood work—is the experiences and hopes of local residents.

  • Organizations

    • Local

      • 211 Toronto: A United Way-funded member agency and expert in information and referral about services in the city.
      • Greater Toronto Urban Observatory: Hosted by the University of Toronto's Centre for Urban and Community Studies, the GTUO acts as a research repository for Toronto's urban region. It has excellent maps as well.
      • The Strong Neighbourhood Task Force: A joint project of the United Way Toronto and the City of Toronto, with the support of the Government of Canada and the Province of Ontario, which emphasized the importance of neighbourhood infrastructure. There are neighbourhoods in Toronto where the population has grown and changed, but local human services have not responded. As a result of the Task Force, 13 priority neighbourhood areas have been identified in our city that, based on need and available services, that will benefit most from community investments. (Read the report: Strong Neighbourhoods: A Call to Action, pdf - 2.6 MB)
      • Toronto City Summit Alliance: A multi sector coalition working to meet the Toronto region's challenges.
      • Greater Toronto Urban Observatory: monitors and evaluates regional urban conditions and trends. It seeks to disseminate an improved policy-relevant knowledge base about the Toronto urban region by providing reliable, accurate, and timely information to policy-makers, businesses, researchers and citizen groups.

    • Canada

      • The Caledon Institute: A non-profit think tank focused on poverty, social policy and community capacity building.
      • Tamarack Institute: An institute for community engagement, with an excellent learning centre as well as information on Vibrant Communities, a community-driven effort to reduce poverty in Canada.

    • International:

      • The Annie E. Casey Foundation (U.S.A.): One of the most prominent American leaders in the area of community change and renewal. See especially the Making Connections program, which focuses on children, family and social networks. They have a large library of resource material.
      • Roundtable on Community Change, Aspen Institute (U.S.A.): Focusing on community change through policy and applied research work, they also have a large library of resource material.
      • The Young Foundation (U.K.): The Young Foundation's work on neighbourhoods and local innovation provides an insight into discussions in the United Kingdom.

  • Skills Building

    • Anti-Racism

      One of the central principles of United Way's work in neighbourhoods and through agencies is to build inclusively. It takes courage to look at how race and racism can change lives, but equity has to exist in such a diverse place as Toronto. The following provides some key starting points.

    • Conflict-Resolution

    • General

      • Community Problem Solving (U.S.A.): M.I.T. professor Xavier de Souza Briggs offers a set of strategic tools and references for community building.
      • The Citizen's Handbook, A Guide to Building Community. Published by the Vancouver Citizen's Committee. This Canadian site provides information on community organizing: e.g. planning, leading, fundraising, involving people, evaluating; community building activities: e.g. community gardens, street reclaiming, festivals and parades, study circles, organizing on hot issues; a range of articles on organizing theory and practice, and participation; and links to other resources.

    • Leadership

    • Partnering

      • Community Building Resource Exchange (U.S.A.): This web site provides a broad array of resources and information about innovative community building efforts to revitalize poor neighborhoods and improve the life circumstances of residents and their families.

    • Research Methodologies

  • Knowledge Building/Addressing The Issues

  • United Way Toronto Resources

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