WISE - exploring the links between policy, poverty and health

WISE - Who We Are: "WISE began in the summer of 2003, as one woman's vision. In exasperation with a system that seemed to have no heart, 'Chris' wrote her story of painful marginalization. With the urging of friends, the story came to the attention of an understanding Programs Officer at Status of Women Canada. Together, they convinced Chris to write a proposal for a project on women's poverty, and once accepted, the rest, as they say, is history.
WISE is now a grassroots nonprofit group of people living in poverty whose mission is to organize, represent, act on behalf of, and join together with other persons in British Columbia whose lives are negatively affected by policies of exclusion.
Our goals include raising the collective voice of persons living in poverty due to policies of exclusion; changing public understanding of poverty as a socioeconomic inevitability, to poverty as a condition of social and economic exclusion; encouraging our communities to work with us to reduce poverty in our neighbourhoods, with such effort benefitting all; and having policymakers recognize that the worsening economic situation of an increasing number of British Columbians has a systemic cause.
We see our task as primarily being to change public perception and understanding of what poverty is and how the cycle of poverty is possible. Until this occurs policymakers and politicians are unlikely to do more than pay lip service to the increasing problem of poverty in BC."