Back in the spring of 2010, three women on Vancouver Island got together around a kitchen table to discuss an issue they were becoming increasingly concerned about — the extent of poverty in their communities — and the conversation took a turn for the unexpected.

They started sharing their memories of their “aunties”: women in their families, or their communities, who helped them when they were growing up. “Our Aunties came to our homes to help with the laundry, bake bread and pies, help cook dinner, to sew our clothes – to hold us, to love us and spend time with us – to help raise us and make sure we were cared for.” In the can-do spirit of the aunties, and in recognition of the important role of the aunty in many First Nations and Metis cultures, they decided that it was time to stop waiting for others to solve the problem of poverty in BC, and time to start remembering, as those aunties did, that we all have a collective responsibility to care for one another.

Aunty Poverty was born.  

Those three Vancouver Island women (all aunties themselves) are Diana Elliot, Provincial Advisor for Aboriginal Infant Development Programs of BC, Joan Gignac, Executive Director of the Aboriginal Headstart Association of BC, and Marcia Dawson, Provincial Aboriginal Manager for Success by Six. They’re calling on us all,  men and women, aborignal and non-aboriginal, to join the Aunty Poverty movement and step up to help eradicate poverty in our own families, neighborhoods, and communities. Want to know what can you do?  Read More…

Source: www.bccf.ca