Organizers with the B.C. Poverty Reduction Coalition are hoping their second annual holiday season campaign will get people thinking about long-term solutions to poverty.

Trish Garner, community organizer with the coalition, said the group's #RethinkGiving campaign is intended to encourage people to donate to charity, but to also urge government to “share the weight”.

“It’s the holiday season, and people are very generous giving at this time of year,” said Garner. “The idea behind the campaign is to try to shift people’s thinking a little bit to both give to charity, and then go beyond that to also advocate for government solutions to the issues of poverty, because that’s what really gets at the root causes.”

Garner said she thought of the idea for the campaign last year when her children’s school was organizing charity fundraisers. One of the elements of this year’s initiative is intended to encourage teachers and students to also send messages to their local MLA calling for a poverty reduction plan.

“My kids are excited to take a can of food and to add it to the pile of food that everyone sees in the hallway of the school, and they see it building up—there’s some excitement around that collective action,” she said. “So we developed a Share the Weight school activity that kids could do that kind of captured some of that.”

The activity involves attaching a message to the students' MLA on the outside of an empty can, and filling a big container with the cans.

“Then you take that big container to your local MLA, and it’s a more creative way to get the message across to them as well,” said Garner.

The coalition is also encouraging people to e-mail Premier Christy Clark through their website. Garner said B.C. is now the last province in Canada without a poverty reduction plan.

“We’re really stressing that and encouraging people to e-mail the premier and ask her to at least make a commitment and start developing one,” she said.

Garner noted that a recent report card released by First Call indicated there are still one in five children living in poverty in the province.

“There’s just been so many reports about poverty recently, that the evidence is really staggering,” she said.

“So we just need the community pressure to really convince politicians to take a stand on this.”