BC Women’s centre gets funding from Status of Women

The Golden Women’s Community Resource Centre has received some good news – and $50,000 - from the Status of Women Canada (SWC), a federal agency that recently went through a shake-up that caused confusion and chaos at women’s centres across the country.

SWC has provided funding to the local centre for the past 27 years for projects that aid vulnerable women in the community.

But when cutbacks were made to the SWC administration budget last November, the local centre cut hours of operation while they waited to see what would happen with the federal agency.

Laurie Dalzell, Golden women’s centre administrator, says the grant was approved following a tense few months for the centre.

“A whole lot of things hinged on the status of this money,” she says. “It would’ve affected everyone’s jobs here if we didn’t get it.”

The $50,000 grant will cover an 18-month project titled ‘Putting Women on the payroll: Overcoming the challenges in rural B.C. to improve women’s economic status in our community’.
The funding allows Dalzell to work at the centre on the project and keep up with the administrative side of operating a non-profit organization.

“It’s a very specific and local project, and that’s what I wanted - to use what we can do to affect our community,” Dalzell says. “The grant will give us all time to focus on the projects and stop wasting our time on finding money for our jobs.”

She says with the funding, community partners will work together to address the barriers women face to getting or keeping jobs.

The project proposal she submitted explained that many studies link women’s physical and mental illnesses to the pressures they experience from work and home, which are major underlying causes for absenteeism and disruption in employment.

Dalzell says the grant is good news for everybody in Golden.

“Issues that affect women affect everybody,” Dalzell says. “Nobody lives in a vacuum.”
Cathie Green is an expert in health and wellness issues. She cannot stress enough the importance of places such as the women’s centre.

“They address tangible economic, health, and social issues like pay equity, violence, and personal coping skills,” Green says. “Just as importantly though, they provide a gathering place for women to connect with each other, share information and resources, and develop social ties.”

Green, a community development facilitator with the Interior Health Authority, says the centre does a great job of working on the tangible social, economic and health issues for women.

The SWC grant was so important, Dalzell invited Kootenay-Columbia MP Jim Abbott to tour the centre so she could explain to him what they do there and how important the money was for its future.

“I really emphasized to him that if we didn’t know by the end of the fiscal year (March 31), it would be very difficult,” she says.

Abbott says he and his staff worked to make sure the grant was approved before the March 31 deadline for 2007 funding.

“I and my staff in Ottawa just kept on calling up and saying, ‘we know this complies, we know we should be getting the money, please give us the official word that this is coming’,” Abbott says.

Dalzell checked with other women’s centres throughout B.C. and found Golden was one of two that received funding from SWC.

She says some places did not even bother to submit an application because they were under the impression funding would not be provided after the recent changes at SWC.

The confusion stemmed from a reallocation of $5 million in administrative costs and changes to the criteria for project funding.

“We streamlined the agency, so we saved $5 million in administration that we reallocated for programming,” explains Veronique Bruneau, press secretary for the Canadian Heritage and Status of Women Agency.

She says SWC has never given core funding to organizations, it has always funded centres on a project-by-project basis.

“We’re funding initiatives that address women in their daily lives and we’re not funding advocacy anymore,” she says. “Groups are free to advocate, but if they ask for money for projects to advocate, then they won’t be funded through SWC.”

An official announcement about the grant will be made at the Golden women’s centre today, Wednesday, April 11, at 11:30 a.m. On hand will be MP Jim Abbott and a member of the Ministry of Canadian Heritage, the ministry responsible for the Status of Women Canada.

LINK: BCNG Portal

LINK: SWC Announcement