Oakville, Ont., February 27, 2020 – The Oakville Community Foundation is excited to announce its participation in the Pilot Fund for Gender Equality, a collaboration between Community Foundations of Canada and the Equality Fund, with support from the Government of Canada.
The Pilot Fund for Gender Equality is part of the “consult and design” phase of a five year program, where learnings from the Pilot Fund will inform the program development. Important stages of the program include future public calls for grantmaking, gender-lens investing, capacity building, community-level programming and other activities.
“The Foundation is pleased to receive $50,000 in funding from the Equality Fund, in its Pilot stage, that supports core areas of impact: Peace, Power and Planet – today’s challenges and opportunities affecting women and gender-spectrum individuals,” Said Frances Pace, Director of Fundholder and Community Engagement. “Being able to participate in this pilot allows us to grow and support those organizations whose work has a specific gender-lens in our community.”
The Foundation submitted a letter of interest to participate in the Pilot in early December and was approved as a collaborator. As part of this partnership, Community Foundations of Canada directed The Foundation to identify actions that could be implemented in a short time frame. As such, five organizations were chosen from The Foundation’s GIVEOakville Campaign as well as The Foundation’s most recent research work, “25 Community Conversations”. The five programs are:
- Sheridan College – Report of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Commission Event
- The Women’s Centre of Halton – Women’s Empowerment Workshops
- SAVIS (Sexual Assault & Violence Intervention Services) – Voice of Change, Advocacy, & Leadership (VOCAL)
- Oakville Public Library – Creating Gender Equity Through Education and Visibility
- Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Halton and Hamilton – GLOW – Girls Linking Our Worlds
The Pilot is the first step in a multi-year commitment to advance gender equality by the community foundation movement. The learnings from the Pilot Fund for Gender Equality will ultimately inform the creation of a program that will support gender equality in communities from coast to coast to coast. There is an opportunity to both do more than just foster gender equality and to begin removing the long standing barriers by catalyzing the community foundation movement and the thousands of Canadians connected with each day.
The Oakville Community Foundation is one of 26 community foundations across Canada that are participating in the Pilot Fund, providing $1.4 million to 112 projects. More details will be released later in 2020 regarding future opportunities for participation and engagement beyond the Pilot.
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