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
The Child and Youth Advocacy Research and Knowledge Centre is a formal partnership between Luna and the University of Calgary. It is an opportunity for CYACs, system partners, researchers, evaluators, and people with lived experience to collaborate on improving our responses and services to children and youth who have experienced abuse by the generation of evidence and sharing of knowledge. This request will support the staffing needed to operationalize our 2023-2025 Business Plan.
Children living in poverty often experience chronic psychological stress, which can negatively impact their development and result in an increased risk of psychoeducational and developmental issues. The goal of this program is to improve the quality of life and educational outcomes for children through psychoeducational and occupational therapy testing and plans and interventions tailored to the family and individual.
Funding will be used to develop a Cochrane Age-Friendly Strategy, a framework to achieve our vision of being an inclusive community that celebrates all stages of life’s journey. The strategy will provide a concrete action plan, outlining short-term, medium and long term goals and deliverables, with the ultimate goal of Cochrane being a community that is not only free from physical and social barriers, but has supported policies, systems and services in place for sustainability of the plan.