Over 600 community members, CED practitioners, government officials and everyone in between passed through the halls at Churchill High School last week for the 2012 Manitoba CD/CED Gathering. The Gathering has grown steadily each year, and 2012 was no exception – our 10th event shattered previous attendence records!
The Gathering celebrations began on Thursday evening, where Raj Patel and Brendan Reimer engaged in town hall-style dialogue that focussed on the inequaliities and innovative solutions to our global food system. Highlights from the main event on Friday included Premier Greg Selinger’s welcomed news that the province will be supporting Enterprising Non-Profits and a new employment pilot project that will help expand BUILD’s operations (read more). Next, Raj Patel dazzled the crowd with a charismatic and thought-provoking keynote address, which pointed out the flaws in our global economic system and innovative ways communities around the world are boosting equality and creating economic opportunities. We would like to thank all attendees, volunteers, and workshop hosts. A special thank you to our dedicated Gathering Planning Committee, and a huge congratulations to Sarah Leeson-Klym, our Gathering Coordinator. See you next year!
From 
The Home Safe documentary film is a powerful educational resource on the realities of homelessness in Canada. With World Homelessness Day coming up on Oct 10th and the International Day for the Elimination of Poverty on Oct 17th, now is the perfect time to host a screening and spark a community dialogue about homelessness and housing issues. 
Chains have little need for local goods and services, and keep local labor costs to a minimum. Most of the revenue that these stores and restaurants capture leaves the community.
One in six Americans now lives in poverty — the highest level in half a century. Poverty has spread beyond cities to suburbs and rural communities and is being transferred from one generation to the next. At the same time, we know more about what it takes to build vibrant communities and to help people lead healthy, productive lives. We also know that expanding access to affordable housing, good schools, transportation, jobs, and even supermarkets and parks, can mean better health and life outcomes for people and revitalize whole communities.
Accelerating Impact, a report prepared by E.T. Jackson and Associates and commissioned by The Rockefeller Foundation as part of a third-party evaluation of our Impact Investing initiative, provides one of the most recent and comprehensive scans of the global impact investing industry to date. The research is informed in part by insights from interviews with more than 100 impact investing leaders from 11 countries.
The Canadian Homelessness Research Network has developed a definition and typology of homelessness intended to improve understanding, measurement and responses to homelessness in Canada. According to the definition, “The problem of homelessness and housing exclusion refers to the failure of society to ensure that adequate systems, funding and support are in place so that all people, even in crisis situations, have access to housing.”