[Dialogue] Carolyn Acker is awarded the Order of Canada

[Wayne Nelson]

Sometime around 1990, Pat Tuecke and Gary Forbes did a workshop on strategic planning at an Organizational Development conference in Toronto.  On the Monday following that event, I got a call from Carolyn Acker. She had been in that workshop and she wanted to talk with us.  Carolyn was the Executive Director of the Regent Park Community Health Centre.  Regent Park is a large neighborhood of subsidized housing. No commerce or anything of that nature - apartment buildings and social services. Like a London housing estate or a cleaner, low rise Pruitt-Eigo or Cabrini Green. Most residents on social assistance, gangs, teen pregnancy etc.

Duncan Holmes and I went to see her and Jo facilitated their strategic planning. It included everyone in the organization and was, over the next year, extremely successful. The whole organization changed and was enlivened. The place was brighter and more in tune with the community. We worked with Carolyn and the health centre for many years. Some events were focused on the planning - implementation cycle. Some were more specific. We facilitated the development of an early childhood development program led by parents. We did facilitator training with staff and board and in some of their program areas. 

In one of the workshops, a brand new idea surfaced. Carolyn has always said that health clinics do not make a community healthy. They had been engaged in a great deal of malaise prevention and  health promotion activities and had the clinic (a brand spankin' new one that was part of the planning) running really well, yet they felt that the situation in the community was still deteriorating.  Carolyn looked at the "Determinants of Health", a framework that identifies the factors that contribute to healthiness in a population. They run all the way from air quality to a sense of empowerment to participate in shaping one's life. She looked and said there are two that are extremely obvious and basic that are in pretty bad shape around here - income level and education. Regent Park was at the bottom of both with all the down stream problems associated with poverty.

By the end of the workshop, the group drafted the initial image for the "Pathways to Education" program.    It is a wrap-around program that helps kids get through school and get the best education possible. It engages students, parents and teachers in a focus on each student in the program.  The program involves academic, social and financial support as well as 1 to 1 mentoring and coaching.  

It has been massively successful and is being replicated across Canada and in the US.

Average youth participation rates of over 85%
High school graduation rates among participants in the program have more than doubled
High school dropout rates have declined by over 70%
The rate of students going on to college or university has increased by 300% 
The program generates a $24 social return for every $1 invested


We are deeply pleased to see Carolyn inducted into the Order of Canada. What an amazing contribution she has made. Perhaps Carolyn's key quality is her compassion and her powerful persistence in pursuing a vision. It was great to be there when the spark of 'I can see some allies' was lit for her. It has been amazing to work with the dizzzying variety of people in that community. It is great to be a part of something that is actually re-structuring a community and breaking the poverty cycle. There are a whole lot of people who can see their way into a more human life.



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Visit - http://www.pathwaystoeducation.ca



- - - - - - - - - - Wayne Nelson
wnelson at ica-associates.ca
O - 416-691-2316
M - 647-229-6910





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