Posted: December 30, 2009
On Wednesday, October 28th, Mr. Michael Toye, Executive Director of the Canadian CED Network, made a formal presentation to the House of Common's Standing Committee on Finance (FINA). Toye's presentation, which was part of the Pre-Budget Consultations 2009, emphasized the importance of addressing the immediate needs of the most vulnerable Canadians who have been hardest hit by the economic downturn.
For two decades now I have worked with many community based organizations and multi-sectoral collaborations on a wide variety of issues. Recently I have found those organizations focusing more and more on evaluation. The internal and external pressures to perform evaluations are strong. Executive Directors and Program Managers often find the demands daunting.
First Nations people have been counted and studied since the time of early contact. The data that have been collected have largely been used to tell stories about First Nations people, not tell First Nations stories. Developing an indicator system for Winnipeg’s First Nations community is an opportunity for the First Nations people of this city to tell their story.
This research began with an aspiration and a thesis. The aspiration is to create a robust social enterprise sector in Manitoba, especially in Winnipeg. The thesis is that other jurisdictions have created large scale, viable social enterprises that meet CED principles, whereas Winnipeg, while following the same principles, has tended to create small, grant dependent social enterprises. The purpose of the research is to test the thesis, examine the factors that have led to success elsewhere, and draw conclusions about how to replicate the success of other jurisdictions in Winnipeg.
A new CCPA report by researcher Monica Townson draws attention to Canada's shockingly high rates of women's poverty and offers a strong critique of recent federal government policies that have helped contribute to it. The report reveals almost one-quarter (24%) of Canadian women raising children on their own and 14% of single older women are poor.
