Building Strong Neighbourhoods
United Way’s Neighbourhood Strategy, is a five-year plan to strengthen 13 priority neighbourhoods across the GTA. The Strategy was implemented in 2005 by United Way Toronto following the Strong Neighbourhood Task Force, a United Way-City of Toronto collaboration that looked into ways to strengthen the social infrastructure of neighbourhoods facing the greatest need across the city. The 13 priority neighbourhoods identified by the Strong Neighbourhood Task Force have since been designated by the city's community safety plan as areas that require focused investment to strengthen neighbourhood supports.
See the Google interactive map of the United Way Priority Neighbourhoods, which can be layered with the Google United Way Member Agency Map.
Strong Neighbourhoods, Stronger Toronto
The Toronto City Summit 2007 brought together more than 400 civic leaders from business, labour and the non-profit sectors, as well as from all three levels of government to discuss the social, economic and environmental challenges facing the region, and to develop an action plan to shape the future of the city.
United Way Toronto President and CEO Frances Lankin and guest speaker, Boston Foundation CEO Paul Grogran, were invited to lead the Strong Neighbourhoods, Stronger Toronto Region session. The discussion focused on determining how to build on the transformational progress and investment already underway in many of our city’s neighbourhoods, and on what still needs to be done to close the “disadvantage gap” between the have and have-not neighbourhoods.
Read the Neighbourhood Backgrounder (pdf - 238 KB)
Read the Neighbourhoods Long Paper (pdf - 2.5 MB)
Breakthrough Thinking: A Forum on Working Smarter in Community Building
Former Clinton advisor and MIT professor Xavier De Souza Briggs, spoke to a Toronto audience on September 18, 2007 about effective community building.
De Souza Briggs linked the importance of community development to addressing social needs in Toronto’s under-served priority neighbourhoods.
Read more about the Breakthrough Thinking forum.