About the Coalition

Our History

In 2012, the SPRC – a multi-sectoral, non-partisan coalition of representatives from a range of organizations and government agencies – was established to implement the THIS is How We End Poverty in Surrey (THIS) poverty reduction strategy. THIS focused on four policy areas – Transportation, Housing, Income and Supports – and included 75 recommendations for action.

Over the past decade, dozens of local organizations and people have worked in partnership with, or in support of, the SPRC to undertake research, advocate on key priorities, host community events, conduct pilot projects, and implement key actions in support of the recommendations outlined in the THIS strategy.

Noting the need for an updated strategy, non-profit and government leaders in the community have confirmed the need for the SPRC to continue its work on poverty. Coming Together: A Collaborative Approach to Ending Poverty in Surrey marks the beginning of the renewal of the SPRC as we apply the outcomes and insights from our first ten years of work to re-envision how we work together, and how we work in the community.

The coalition’s vision

Surrey is a place where people live with dignity, respect, and an equitable opportunity to thrive.

 

The coalition’s mission

To facilitate collective action on eliminating poverty and inspire systemic change in Surrey.

Speak Out

The SPRC will support and amplify the poverty-related initiatives and calls to action of other local tables and coalitions in Surrey.

Plan & Pilot

The SPRC will consider the local, regional, provincial, and national contexts when planning action. The SPRC’s plans will ensure that its activities do not duplicate or compete with the work of local agencies and/or other coalitions in Surrey.

Research

The SPRC will collect, analyze, and report, in a variety of formats, quantitative and qualitative information on poverty in Surrey; this will help others to understand local poverty and inform and mobilize action.

Convene

The SPRC will bring stakeholders together across sectors and create opportunitiesfor meaningful collaboration and cooperation.

Our Principles

  • The SPRC is committed to the long and winding path towards reconciliation – including taking the lead from Indigenous people on how to outline a collective path forward.

  • There are many groups doing valuable work related to poverty in Surrey, and it is important that we don’t duplicate their efforts. We will listen to the voices of people with lived experience of poverty and amplify the calls to action of other community tables and organizations.

  • Poverty impacts everyone and we are committed to working in partnership across sectors to create a unifying vision for ending poverty in Surrey. We want to expand our reach to identify and collaborate with new stakeholders beyond the social service sector to find shared priorities across specific interests.

  • We will strive for full and direct participation of people with lived experience of poverty in all our work – from planning to action – and do our best to identify and eliminate whatever roadblocks we can to ensure that the SPRC events, process, and table remain as inclusive and person-centered as possible.

  • As a coalition we are focused on being action-oriented, finding a balance between short-term impacts and long-term solutions. We will capture lessons learned along the way and continue to improve our processes and approaches as we continue to learn and unlearn more about poverty in our community.

  • We will continue to check our individual and collective positionality, privilege, and our internalized bias around the circumstances and systems that create and perpetuate poverty.

  • The SPRC table will be a space where community and organizational leaders can bring creativity to their approaches to eliminating poverty: both through our actions and also how we reimagine working together.

  • We will strive to ensure our recommendations and actions support equitable outcomes, acknowledging the barriers and systems in place that create inequity, and understanding that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to ending poverty in our community.

  • Our focus is not to alleviate poverty: we want to reduce the number of people living in poverty. This important shift sends us upstream to identify and take action on the systems that create and maintain poverty to ensure that we aren’t just making poverty more comfortable – we eliminate it completely.

  • Our top priority is to understand and take action on key issues in Surrey – assisting decision-makers at all levels of government to better understand our city’s unique issues and ensure that Surrey receives its fair share of resources to tackle poverty at the local level.