The Trellis Transformation Project for Young People in Care will take a critical look at the current status of its group care programs, the larger child intervention system, and be thoughtful about how to proceed in supporting youth and their families who have child intervention system involvement. This project comes at a time when outcomes for youth in group care are extremely poor, ranging from family and community isolation and disconnection to drug poisoning deaths. This also includes a significantly higher number of Indigenous youths being removed from families and placed into the child welfare system than ever before. Through a pilot year of investments in new staffing models, a new family case management model, and a concentrated shift from a ‘youth-focused’ to ‘family-focused’ model of care, Trellis Society intends to implement a transformational systems change to group care and positively impact true generational change.
The Urban Society of Aboriginal Youth (USAY) is undertaking a transformative initiative to construct an Indigenous Youth Centre in Forest Lawn, Calgary. This innovative project, which started November 2022 with the purchase of land and will be completed in December 2024, will provide a safe and inclusive space for urban Indigenous youth, fostering cultural connections, educational opportunities, and holistic well-being. With a comprehensive range of programs, the Youth Centre aims to empower approximately 45,850 community members, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous to annually on a journey to reconciliation, ensuring equitable access to resources, mentorship, and culturally relevant activities. USAY’s visionary approach seeks to create a lasting impact on the lives of Indigenous youth, promoting a sense of belonging, resilience, and pride within the community.
The Home is (Her)e project aims to unearth the true scale and state of women and gender-diverse peoples’ homelessness and housing need in Calgary, including hidden forms of homelessness and the unique pathways and cycles of homelessness that women and gender-diverse people experience, with the goal of developing policy and systems-level solutions that will more adequately meet these needs. The project will also seek to understand and address current systemic pressures, bottlenecks and challenges that keep women and gender-diverse out of stable housing. The ultimate impact of Home is (Her)e is improved safety, housing stability and reduced homelessness among women, gender-diverse people, and their children.
YWCA Banff is partnering with the Wim and Nancy Pauw Foundation and SAIT to bring a tourism program to Banff. The YWCA site will bring education and training opportunities for employees in the hospitality industry, with certificate programs on cultural awareness, stewardship, and creating safe spaces to live, work and play in. A significant capital investment will transform our current site into an updated space where we will provide educational opportunities and enhance our infrastructure to deliver critical programs and services to meet the needs of the Bow Valley community.
The collective strategically supported the community through the pandemic, and now provides continuing care supports post COVID. This unique approach to delivering programs and services is geared towards removing barriers and empowering individuals. The collective maintains its Indigenous based framework and strategy to ensure cultural relevancy and safety. Their goal is to address the following key areas: basic needs, food security and provide cultural reconnection opportunities. The Seven Brothers Circle membership operates on a ‘pooled’ resource and coordinated approach to meeting the needs of the community.
Project Weave is a collaborative that will be convened and facilitated by ActionDignity with the aim of addressing systemic barriers to mental health and well-being among racialized community members in Calgary. ActionDignity works to address systemic barriers that hinder active civic participation and engagement of ethnocultural and racialized communities in Calgary. For the past 20 years, Action Dignity has surfaced various vectors that contribute to social exclusion among racialized community members; they have built the capacity of grassroots ethnocultural community groups and leaders to design and deploy culturally appropriate interventions; and, they have collaborated with policymakers and systems-actors to incorporate the voices and lived experiences of ethnocultural communities into policymaking to promote social inclusion. In the project, ActionDignity aims to mobilize a collaborative comprising of ethnocultural community groups, service providers and public institutions to work towards making the Alberta Mental Health Services system responsive to the needs and lived experiences of racialized communities.
The Calgary African Community Collective is a Black-led not for profit umbrella organization that is focused on policy advocacy and systems change. Through this initiative, CACC will mobilize resources, interest and partnerships to create the conditions to tackle generational poverty and inequity that have marginalized our communities. Guided by the Nguzo Saba Principles, CACC aspires to shift the dynamics of power and effect change by empowering our grassroots and associations through knowledge mobilization, research, adaptive capacity building and systems thinking. CACC will facilitate its member organizations to tackle the poverty in the Black communities through a framework that will allow them to look beyond income and include programs and services to fully integrate people into the society regardless of their situation.
Newcomers from Calgary’s East African community gather to learn about local resources and celebrate families
Volunteers provide ongoing mentorship to women evacuees