Community partners awarded over $12M in funding to tackle gender-based violence in Manitoba

Posted on July 22, 2024 by Peggy

A micro-credential program tailored to train the next front-line shelter support workers received a boost in funding to continue offering tuition-free education — one of many community initiatives aiming to help those impacted by gender-based violence in Manitoba.

The program, a first of its kind in the province, has been running at Winnipeg’s Red River College Polytechnic in partnership with the Manitoba Association of Women’s Shelters. It trains current and aspiring shelter workers to meet the needs of individuals experiencing homelessness and family violence.

Funding from the province allowed for the inception of the program last year, and a class of 23 front-line support shelter workers has graduated since. Some of them were once users of the shelter system who through this program were able to leverage their personal experience and help others.

“It just goes to show the full circle of how when you give a hand to help, and someone receives that gift of support, they then have an opportunity to give back into the same circle,” said Christine Watson, vice president academic at Red River College Polytechnic.

A new round of combined funding — $6.2 million from the federal government and $6.35 from the province — was announced at a press conference at Red River College Monday, as part of a decade-long national action plan to end gender-based violence in Canada.

The program at Red River has also helped meet the needs of Manitoba’s shelter system through educating and retaining workers in a profession facing labour shortages.

Now a month short of seeing a new cohort of students graduate, the micro-credential program is one of 19 community-based initiatives awarded with part of the over $12 million in funding.

“The investments that are being announced today bring light to so many,” Watson said. “They bring light to communities, they bring light to those who are helping others who are seeking refuge.”

A woman in a white blazer and dress stands in a podium speaking to an audience in front of purple billboards. — The funding is allocated as part of a decade-long national action plan to end gender-based violence in Canada. Manitoba was the first province to sign the agreement last year. (Natalia Weichsel/Radio-Canada)

Manitoba was the first province to sign a bilateral agreement with the federal government last year to work toward ending gender-based violence, and as its work enters its second year, roughly $12.5 million will be distributed among community partners in Manitoba to address gender-based violence by tackling prevention and means of support for victims and survivors, as announced Monday.

“Gender-based violence is one of the most pervasive, deadly, deeply rooted human rights violations of our time,” Marci Ien, women and gender equality and youth minister, said at the press conference.

The funding is provided directly to the agencies, a number of whom run programs tailored to communities disproportionately impacted by gender-based violence, including Indigenous women, newcomers and members of the queer community, Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine said Monday at the announcement.

“Our community partners are the experts on the ground day in and day out, and they know what’s best and where the resources are needed,” Fontaine said.

“It is sacred work. It is hard work.”

Other community partners receiving funding

The Blue Thunderbird Family Care Inc., a community organization in Winnipeg, will be among those receiving a bulk of the combined funding for its Grandmother’s Council, a program designed to support single mothers who don’t have family or community support.

Fontaine said in turn, this group of matriarchs will help keep families together, and work to avoid children being taken away from their families and placed under the care of Child and Family Services.

Elmwood Community Resource Centre will also be awarded a portion of the funding to continue its immigrant and newcomer family violence counselling program tailored to men and boys, a group Ien said needs to be worked with more so they can be “fully engaged” at the table to bring an end to gender-based violence.

“These dollars that that Canada’s committed to over the next four years are transformative in the work of tackling gender-based violence,” Fontaine said.

“You can build up that support and start to see the fruits of that labour in tackling and ending gender-based violence.”