Pubdate: Sat, 05 Aug 2006 Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC) Copyright: 2006 Times Colonist Contact: http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481 Author: Jack Knox, Times Colonist UNITED WAY TO TARGET HOMELESSNESS, DRUG ADDICTION Walking downtown, you pass another human train wreck derailed in a doorway and go, "Somebody should do something about that." Just like you did last year, and the year before that. Somebody should have done something a long time ago. Nobody has, at least not in a co-ordinated manner. Maybe tackling social problems is supposed to be the job of government, the nanny state, but the nanny quit a few years ago and hasn't been replaced. Waiting for government to act is like leaving the porch light on for Jimmy Hoffa. So, if not government, who? All of us, replies the United Way, which is in the process of reinventing itself for that purpose. After 69 years of being what board chair Sharon Halkett calls a "well-oiled fund-raiser and fund-distributor," the United Way of Greater Victoria is looking to assume a proactive role. Instead of merely collecting donations and distributing the proceeds to its 39 member agencies, the local organization plans to take on more of an active, collaborative role, channelling money to projects that are meant to bring long-term solutions to particular social problems. Beginning in 2007, it wants to partner with other groups, pulling all the community players to the table to address the root causes of the most serious issues. At the moment, it has identified those issues as homelessness and housing, mental health and addictions, and family development and wellness. An online survey at www.unitedwayvictoria.bc.ca is meant to gauge whether the public agrees with those priorities. Now this is spongy stuff, all this talk of pooling financial and intellectual capital, and not without its sensitivities, which is why the United Way is doing a bit of tip-toeing into the change. The most obvious question is what effect the expanded mandate will have on those 39 member agencies, which will no longer be able to count on dividing the annual campaign proceeds -- $5.1 million last year -- among themselves exclusively, year after year. All manner of non-profit groups will be eligible to apply for a piece of the pie as the focus shifts to attacking problems at their roots. "To do that means we can no longer restrict our fund distribution to 39 agencies," says Halkett. The plan is to guarantee funding to the existing agencies for three years. But even after that, most appear likely to reposition themselves as the United Way's new community partners anyway. Still, forgive the agencies for not doing backflips at the prospect of having to compete for funding they now take for granted. To that, Halkett et al can argue that the current model isn't solving the problems. They talk about silos -- community agencies working independently, sometimes duplicating services, with no global direction. "The bottom line is our community has changed a lot since 1937," says Halkett. Victoria is faced with different problems of varying priority, and no matter how much money gets funnelled at them through the United Way, they just won't go away. "The reality is that social and human conditions in our city aren't improving," says Kathi Springer, who is working with the United Way. "We can't pretend that it's going to get better." We don't want to end up like Vancouver, recently painted by the influential magazine The Economist as a troubled city where drugs are openly dealt on street corners and the homeless holler at well-heeled theatregoers. No one, including those at the United Way, pretends to possess the magic bullet that will fix all this. But they do believe community-based solutions are the best bet we have, or at least better than the status quo. "Something needs to shift," says Halkett. "Something needs to change." - --- MAP posted-by: Derek