Greetings from the Poverty Olympics Organizing Committee!

For the last 2 years, the Poverty Olympics, a community-led event, has been staged in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver in British Columbia. It involves skits loosely based on Olympic events and features its own Poverty Anthem and official mascots. The purpose of the Poverty Olympics is to advocate for poverty reduction in BC, an aim captured in our slogan – End Poverty: It’s Not a Game.

Our intent is not to disrespect the athletes or the concept of sporting competition, but to emphasise the higher priorities of addressing poverty and homelessness in BC. To this end, the event has in previous years focused on the broken promises of the Olympic’s own Inner City Inclusivity Report which features a number of poverty reduction commitments, and emphasised the discrepancies between Olympic spending and government spending towards social programs that would alleviate poverty.

The Vancouver Poverty Olympics are brought to you by a group of concerned citizens and community groups who oppose the 2010 Winter Games because public dollars could be more justly spent on ending poverty and homelessness.  Please see the poster here for information on the upcoming Poverty Olympics on February 7th, 2010.  Feel free to distribute!

The Poverty Olympics Torch Relay needs you! We are looking for community groups or individuals around the province to commit to being a part of the first ever Poverty Olympics Torch Relay to be held in January and February 2010 in the lead-up to the official Olympics. It will end at the Poverty Olympics, the highly successful community event that has been staged in Vancouver for the last 2 years (www.povertyolympics.ca). We will provide most of the materials you will need including leaflets, torch instructions, and many other resources.

So often the face of poverty is the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver but we know people are struggling all over the province. The Torch Relay will highlight these stories, the stories of your local community, in calling on the government to make some very necessary changes. Contact Trish at info [at] povertyolympics.ca to sign on as a Torchbearer for the Poverty Olympics Torch Relay.