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CivicAction

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CivicAction (legal name the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance, formerly the Toronto City Summit Alliance) is a coalition of civic leaders in the Toronto region. CivicAction has worked with business, government, community, labour, and academia to address social, economic and environmental challenges in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. CivicAction is led by a Board of Directors and a 75-leader Steering Committee. CivicAction adopted its current name in December 2010.

Contents

Every four years, CivicAction holds a summit to identify the biggest issues facing the region. Out of the summit, CivicAction sets its agenda for the next four years and launches initiatives and campaigns to help tackle these issues. The fourth CivicAction Summit “Better City Bootcamp” was held on April 28, 2015.

Organization

CivicAction is a non-profit, non-partisan organization formed to address challenges to the Toronto region’s social and economic future. It was created by David Pecaut following a 2002 summit of business and community leaders. Pecaut led a 40-member steering committee that generated Enough Talk: An Action Plan for the Toronto Region, which provided the roadmap for the organization's focus on issues where there was a clear consensus for action and where it felt progress could be made quickly.

Following Enough Talk, the committee created a non-profit corporation to convene leaders from all sectors to work together to tackle specific social and economic challenges.

Past and present Board Chairs:

  • 2003-2009: David Pecaut, the late American-born civic leader and former managing director of The Boston Consulting Group
  • 2010-2014: John Tory, businessman and current Mayor of Toronto
  • 2014–present: Rod Phillips, Chair, Postmedia Canada Corp

    • Projects

    Following are CivicAction's current projects, campaigns, and initiatives:

  • Escalator: Jobs for Youth Facing Barriers: Launched in September 2014, Escalator realizes a multi-sector approach and brings private sector to the table to be part of the solution to youth unemployment. The first cohort of underserved youth in the GTHA have graduated from NPower Canada’s employer designed training and internship program, and the second cohort has begun, double the size of the first class. LinkedIn has partnered to co-host train-the-trainers sessions to bring youth online to connect to opportunities. CivicAction, United Way Toronto and York Region, and Ten Thousand Coffees have soft launched a regional mentoring initiative to connect youth to role models. We have secured a number of private sector companies to help, including RBC, TD, Accenture Canada, Cisco, LinkedIn Canada, H&M, and Virgin Mobile Canada.
  • Greening Greater Toronto The 120-member Greening Greater Toronto Task Force and Working Groups charted a plan to help the GTA become the greenest city region in North America. Greening Greater Toronto's flagship project is the Race to Reduce, a four-year corporate challenge that will reduce energy consumption in participating office buildings by 10%. one of the largest regional energy challenges in the world. Race to Reduce is a four-year corporate challenge which is aiming to reduce energy consumption in participating office buildings by 10%.Approximately 200 buildings covering 69 million sq. ft. of commercial office space in the GTHA had reduced collective energy use by 7.9 per cent after three years, 2% shy of the four-year reduction goal of 10%. The program is on track to take more than 3,200 cars off the road and generate $9.6 million in energy savings. The Race has garnered industry acclaim and was recognized as the Canadian recipient of the 2015 Energy Globe world award for sustainability, along with the Green Award of the Year at the NAIOP 2013 Greater Toronto chapter’s Real Estate Excellence awards.
  • DiverseCity: The Greater Toronto Leadership Project: Launched in 2008, DiverseCity was developed by CivicAction and The Maytree Foundation to diversify public, private, non-profit and political leadership in the GTHA. Between 2008 and 2013, DiverseCity matched more than 640 highly qualified candidates from visible minority and under-represented immigrant groups with governance positions in agencies, boards, and nonprofit organizations across the GTA through its DiverseCity onBoard initiative. Furthermore, CivicAction’s Diversity Fellows program sees 130 rising civic stars receive 100 hours of intensive leadership training each year.
  • Emerging Leaders Network: Launched in 2006, CivicAction's Emerging Leaders Network (ELN) is a 900-strong group of rising city-builders whose mission is to advance the Toronto region through awareness, influence and action. Each year ELN offers more than 30 events to build the skills of young leaders. ELN members have led high-impact projects such as the Pan Am Path, Toronto Homecoming, and Project Neutral.

    • Over 6000 people in the Toronto region have been involved in projects CivicAction has developed and supported, including:

    • Toront03 Alliance: raised and invested over $11 million in post-SARS tourism recovery and branding, leading to over $80 million in economic benefit for Ontario;

    • Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC): developed in partnership with The Maytree Foundation, TRIEC's Mentoring Partnership has created 4200 mentoring matches and Career Bridge has facilitated over 1000 internships (close to 80% of Career Bridge interns have secured full-time work in their field);

    • Strong Neighbourhoods Task Force: a collaborative effort of United Way Toronto, the City of Toronto and the Alliance, the Task Force created a plan to revitalize neighbourhoods, identifying 13 as priorities for investment;

    • Modernizing Income Security for Working-Age Adults (MISWAA) Task Force: developed a roadmap to modernize income security to ensure the full economic participation of working-age adults. An initiative of the Alliance and St. Christopher House, MISWAA helped to bring about the federal Working Income Tax Benefit, the new Ontario Child Benefit, and a provincial dental plan;

    • Toronto Region Research Alliance: unites governments, technology-based companies, colleges and universities and financial institutions in attracting major investments and promoting research in the Golden Horseshoe;

    • Luminato: this annual $15 million international festival capitalizes on Toronto’s strong cultural and tourism assets. It features artists from across Canada and abroad and attracted over one million participants in 2007 and again in 2008; and

    • Canada's first Social Entrepreneurship Summit: together with MaRS Discovery District, the Centre for Social Innovation and The Boston Consulting Group, the Alliance brought together 160 Canadian social entrepreneurs and others to support social entrepreneurship and award the Schwab Foundation's first Canadian Social Entrepreneur of the Year award.

    • Your32 campaign: Launched in the fall of 2012, CivicAction's Your32 regional transportation campaign brought citizens, community leaders, and elected officials together to build public support for a better and financially sustainable regional transportation system. The campaign saw half of all elected officials from across the GTHA and across levels of government join thousands of residents to pledge their support for new sources of funding for transportation, resulting in a $15 billion dedicated investment in regional transportation for the GTHA in the July 2014 Ontario budget.

    References

    CivicAction Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA