Community Economic Development (CED) Strategy

How the strategy works

The CED Strategy’s projects, partnerships, and programs are helping to advance our work on poverty reduction, affordability, equity, and other key areas of concern. 

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  Goals

  The overall goal of the strategy is to create broad, inclusive opportunities for residents to thrive. It does this by putting community assets to work in creative ways and unlocking the potential of partnerships and collaboration.

  The CED Strategy focuses mainly on the Downtown Eastside - an area with particularly entrenched poverty and barriers to employment - with some actions having city-wide implications. 

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  Core ideas

  The CED Strategy is built around nine core ideas that emerged from engagement with CEDSAC members and the broader community:

  1. Seeing the local economy as an income generation spectrum
  2. Support low income self-employment
  3. Focusing on assets and not deficiencies
  4. Animating social innovation hubs
  5. Addressing community retail needs
  6. Increasing incomes and reducing poverty
  7. Community benefit agreements
  8. Stewardship and activation of public spaces
  9. Building organizational capacity and fostering partnerships

  The Income Generation Spectrum

  Not everyone can work a traditional 9am to 5pm job, but everyone needs to make money in a competitive city like Vancouver.

  The income generation spectrum is a framework for meeting people where they are at, with a variety of low barrier, flexible ways to generate income. It non-judgementally acknowledges that people create livelihoods in diverse ways, some of which are less formal and structured than others.

  The idea of the income generation spectrum is fundamental to the CED Strategy: rather than focus solely on traditional forms of employment, the CED strategy seeks to support residents in building capacity and accessing opportunities in the local economy, in whatever form works best for them given their life circumstances.