PovNet: Building an online anti-poverty community

PovNet provides online tools that facilitate communication, community and access to information around poverty-related issues in British Columbia and Canada. We work to collect relevant news and resources of use to advocates, community workers, marginalized communities and the general public.

You can learn about every aspect of the work PovNet does and view community feedback and photos in this PovNet Slideshow (PDF).

If you are interested in our history and what our community has to say about us, make sure you check out:

• The PovNet comic, On The Line And Online: Anti-poverty Organizing Then and Now;
• The PovNet Digital Story; and

PovNet's main projects are:

• The PovNet website
  Our website is a clearinghouse of links to current legal information on poverty law subjects, as well as hundreds of helpful organizations and essential resources.
• PovNetU
  Our online courses for advocates, community and settlement workers are facilitated by experienced advocates and offer rich opportunities for learning and collaboration.
• Mailing Lists
  Our private email lists facilitate invaluable connections between advocates and community workers. They and cover a number of issues relevant to anti-poverty advocacy work.
• Outreach & Networking
  We work to ensure that our community stays connected and informed via newsfeeds, popular social networking tools, collecting feedback from the communities we serve and several multimedia projects.

"It just seems it was so long ago that most advocates didn't have computers never mind internet access and would spend hours on the telephone to get information needed to help people. Sometimes it would take days to get the necessary information.

Although there were anti-poverty communities back then and provincial organizations such as End Legislated Poverty and federated anti-poverty groups of bc, dialogue and information sharing among individual advocates and activists was cumbersome. PovNet facilitated those connections, enriching what some would call a virtual community.

PovNet has become more than a virtual community, in my view it is flesh and bones with a real heart, it is organic and if the internet failed tomorrow, connections that have been made provincially and nation-wide would endure."

— Alayne Keough, former PovNet board member and long-time advocate