From Waterloo, Paul Born quietly exports a way of fighting poverty
Ending hardship is ‘the most important thing to do if you want world peace,’ says Tamarack Institute’s co-founder
You’ve probably never heard of Paul Born or the Waterloo-based non-profit organization he runs.
But Born and the Tamarack Institute he co-founded have found a way to lift hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty across North America.
Here are just four examples of change for the better based on the collaborative discussion and decision-making style he and his group have pioneered:
• Helped get 25,000 people in Central Iowa out of poverty in two years.
• Pinpointed the causes and reduced the risk of bladder cancer in Maine.
• Helped the next generation in Northern Ireland to live together more peacefully.
• Dramatically reduced poverty in Waterloo Region, as it was reeling from plant closures in the 1990s.
Tamarack, which has 21 staff and is based at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, conducts training and coaching sessions for communities globally.
The topic is often poverty reduction, but it can also be about creating better communities, tackling health problems or improving emergency management.
“Our community is blessed to have people like him,” said Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic.
“Paul has a way of taking those hard-to-talk-about topics into a very thoughtful and engaging dialogue, that ultimately leads to ideas and solutions to make things better.”
Tamarack, of which Born is co-CEO, has just announced a $2-million partnership with the federal government to continue working with more than 300 municipalities across Canada, helping them work together to reduce poverty.
Additionally, the money will allow for research to be done and shared to spread the knowledge.
“This is a national poverty-reduction education strategy,” said Born.
The system Tamarack uses is as innovative, in its way, as another famous export from Waterloo Region, the BlackBerry.
Here’s an example of how it is working in central Iowa, an area with about 600,000 people including the city of Des Moines.
In the past two years, Born’s “sage advice and authentic way of leading” has helped to get 25,000 Iowans out of poverty and brought the percentage up to 67 per cent of Central Iowans who are financially selfsufficient, said Elisabeth Buck, president of the United Way of Central Iowa, which is spearheading the anti-poverty effort there.
That’s up from a low point of 65 per cent two years ago. The community’s goal is to reach 70 per cent who are financially selfsufficient by 2020, Buck said.
To make this happen, Born advised Buck and her colleagues to bring four different kinds of voices to the table: Business, government (including educational institutions and health-care facilities), non-profit organizations, and — most often overlooked — people with “lived experience.”
In this case, that meant people on low incomes, who actually “led” the work, said Buck.
One of the key problems in Iowa is a “skills mismatch,” she said. Research showed there are jobs offering $20 to $30 an hour, in what she calls the middle-skills sector, including medical technicians, skilled trades and call-centre operators. But there aren’t enough people with the education to fill these jobs. So an effort was made to make it easier for high-school dropouts to get their diplomas. Government offered funding to help people return to class and finish their schooling.
The people who were experiencing poverty helped guide the reforms, including the need for a speedy process with minimal red tape.
They pointed out that with families to feed and rent to pay, they couldn’t quit their jobs and go back to school full-time. The schedule had to be flexible, or it wouldn’t work.
“They really helped us to understand the problems,” said Buck
Since this effort was launched in 2015, nearly 1,900 adults have earned their diploma, and the most recent data indicates that roughly half increased their income by at least 10 per cent, Buck said.
Born had done something similar locally in the late 1990s with another organization that pre-dated Tamarack, Lutherwood Community Opportunities Development Association.
The goal was to eliminate poverty for 2,200 families, using the same idea of bringing together people from different walks of life.
The project was multi-pronged with dozens of separate projects. The hope was that, bit by bit, poverty could be overcome.
In one project, 57 business leaders agreed to each hire one person living in poverty. In another, a greenhouse was found for an agency working with people who had mental-health issues and wanted to develop job skills working in the horticulture industry.
The idea that you can successfully solve a problem by bringing many perspectives and lots of data to the table works for other problems, too.
Born had success helping the Maine Cancer Society track down the cause of bladder cancer. Maine had the highest rates of this in the United States.
This endeavour used the same idea of four groups of people focused on the problem.
In that case, the people with “lived experience” were the cancer patients. Along with business, government and non-profit agencies, they dug into the data and discovered that the cause involved chemicals in well water.
In a rural state, that was a significant finding. And a simple filter, to be installed by well diggers and drillers, has helped bring down the levels of the chemical that was the issue, Born said.
Born grew up in Abbotsford, B.C., in a tightly knit community of refugee Mennonites who had been traumatized by war and famine in Ukraine. His family arrived in 1949. Both his grandfathers had been shot and killed by Stalin’s forces.
Almost every family in this community farmed. The farmers learned from one another, and that helped everyone prosper. That was a key principle he never forgot.
“Together, they were smart,” he said. “They learned together.”
That idea of a “hive mind” where people with many different perspectives come together is a trademark of Born’s work, even before he co-founded Tamarack.
More than 20 years ago, working with the Community Opportunities Development Association, Born worked with 200 young people from Northern Ireland who had been connected with one of two rival groups during the war: The Ulster Freedom Fighters and the Irish Republican Army.
With funds from the European Union, he brought them over to live with families from Newfoundland of Irish descent who had settled in Cambridge.
For three months, those young people were engaged in peace training, work experiences and parties.
“We wanted them to see each other as human beings,” Born said.
And “we had families knocking our doors down” to host them.
Born has lots of other ideas about eliminating poverty. He sees that the high cost of child care and housing keep people in poverty.
He sees that a small change can be used to make a big difference.
For example, some older people don’t know they can apply for government income supplements to which they are entitled. All they need is a person to help them through the paperwork, and they won’t be poor any longer.
And when a marriage breaks up, that can be catastrophic for the family finances. Born thinks there should be marriage insurance that protects the family’s income during the recovery period.
For him, ending poverty is deeply personal.
It’s connected with his family and those other refugee families he grew up with, who had seen so much death and violence in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
“I actually think (ending) poverty is the most important thing to do with having peace in the world,” he said.
“If you’ve got nothing to lose, you can be recruited to do almost anything.”
I actually think ending poverty is the most important thing to do with having peace in the world.
PAUL BORN