About the Author
Angie Peters
President & CEO Yonge Street Mission, Author
Angie Peters is an inspiring and collaborative leader in Toronto’s social sector serving the communities where she grew up. In 2003, she left her executive role in telecommunications to work towards the end of poverty. She founded ZOË Alliance, an international social enterprise, before joining Toronto’s Yonge Street Mission in 2013 as President and CEO. In 2022, she hosted a Poverty Hack-a-Thon that has since birthed a city-wide multi-sector collaboration that is creating trust, action and momentum to build communities where everyone can thrive.
Theory of Change
Most people in our society hold in common the view that every person is of value and should have the opportunity to pursue their goals and thrive. Yet, while we did not intentionally design to have poverty, that is what we have…a society with ever widening disparity where many people are being left behind. The good news is that we are not powerless, and we can create a society that is truly aligned with our values by living out three key principles.
Lived Experience
Collaboration
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Shared Goals
The leadership and insights of people who are currently experiencing poverty is essential to ground and focus all efforts. Understanding poverty today is the key to realizing our goals. Ensuring that the voice of experience is central, informs, and guides all decisions is the only way we can proceed in an informed way.
If we could have found a way to end generational poverty working in siloes, it would have been done by now. No one sector or person has the ability to develop an effective path forward, and each sector and every person has a specific role to play. By engaging the strengths of everyone, we can choose our contribution toward collaborative efforts that will add up to real and lasting change.
There is not much point in continuing to work the way that we are. At cross purposes, with the efforts of one group curbing the effectiveness of another’s. By identifying the high leverage actions that will lead to the greatest outcomes, we can work cooperatively and effectively toward realizing our shared goals.
