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Warden Excited for Town Hall Forum on Poverty

Operation Sharing is getting set to host an Oxford County Town Hall meeting to talk about poverty.

WOODSTOCK - Oxford county is about to have a very real discussion about poverty. 

The Town Hall Forum on Tuesday September 26th will be hosted by Operation Sharing and will feature a panel of local leaders, experts and doctors. They will be talking about critical new research to reduce poverty. 

Warden David Mayberry tells Heart FM he is thrilled to see the community engaged on such an important issue. 

"I'm not a believer that Government should do all things for all people, they should facilitate things but they don't necessarily have to always do them, so I am actually thrilled to see Operation Sharing pick this up and saying we want to have this workshop, this discussion." 

Mayberry says he is excited to sit down at the Forum and try to find some solutions, however he notes it is not going to be easy. 

"The question is a difficult one and it is what do we actually do about poverty. Oxford County through it's housing programs is aiming to build better quality housing and more of it and we are always struggling to find ways to come up with more tax dollars to be able to do that. Over the last number of years we have worked with a number of different organizations and non profit groups to try and stretch the dollars as far as we can and I see that as part of the County role. The problem with poverty it is not a simple fix, it's not something you can just throw money at, it's far more complex as people are." 

The Keynote speaker is Dr. Lynn McIntyre. McIntyre is Professor Emerita of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada in Public Health and Preventive Medicine, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. She retired from her active faculty positron in
November 2015 and is now 'free' to work on ways to reduce household food insecurity--inadequate access to food due to financial constraint. Dr. McIntyre will lead off a town hall conversation on poverty reduction as it might apply to Oxford County by presenting key findings from her over 30 years of research on household food insecurity, which is a marker of deep poverty in Canada. She will discuss who is vulnerable, what policies increase or reduce food insecurity, and what needs to be done. Most of all, she will bust the myth that food-based rather than income-based solutions are needed.

The panel will also feature Moderator Chris Cunningham from the Southgate Centre, Warden David Mayberry, Vanessa Giuliano, Paul Beaton the Director of Human Services at Oxford County, Ken Brooks who is a lawyer specializing in poverty law and Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier. 

The meeting will be happening on Tuesday September 26th from 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm at the Unifor Hall in Woodstock.

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