Status of Women Canada Funding Call

Status of Women Canada Funding Call 

Status of Women Canada is seeking proposals for projects that address violence against women and girls. There are two streams for this funding: stopping cyberviolence and
preventing or responding to sexual violence through access to community services. The deadline for applications is December 1, 2013.

Blue Water Project Grants

Blue Water Project Grants

The RBC Blue Water Project helps provide access to drinkable, swimmable, fishable water, now and for future generations. The deadline for organization Leadership Grant expressions of interest is December 20, 2013.  The deadline for Community Action Grant applications is February 3, 2014.

Grant Opportunity from Devon Canada "Investing in People"

         

"Investing In People" is intended to reflect Devon Canada's strong commitment to the development of people and their support for programs that create healthy and respectful workplaces. The grant encourages innovative projects and activities that help to build organizational, rather than individual capacity.

 

The grant may be used for organizational improvement projects for either employees and/or volunteers. Examples of the type of programs include:

 

• Organizational strategic planning

• Workforce planning

• Development of a benefits and compensation program

• Employee and volunteer training

• Team building and knowledge sharing activities

• Leadership development

 

In the case of training, applicants must demonstrate the value of the learning opportunity to the organization as a whole and not just to the individual that will participate in the training

 

Applications must be made online at http://investinginpeople.ca/.  The deadline for applications is December 13, 2013. Grants will be awarded in January 2014.

 

Books and access

The now-famous 2010 OCLC study, "Perceptions of Libraries" (oclc.org/reports/2010perceptions.en.html), provided us with some context for the concerns of our stakeholders. The study showed that the word most associated with libraries was "books." In fact, 75% of all respondents said that books were the thing they thought of first when they thought of libraries. In an age in which Google and Wikipedia are primary research sources for many and Amazon sells more ebooks than physical books, it is little wonder that our stakeholders would worry about the decline of an institution they primarily associate with paper books.

We surveyed our customers in spring 2012 to assess whether the OCLC study's findings would ring true in our district as well. Among the 25,000 respondents, 65% agreed that "books" was the word they would most closely associate with the library. Focus groups of community leaders took it a step further, informing us that they consider the library a great community resource, but it would be even more valuable if people recognized and understood the vastness of resources available.

http://www.infotoday.com/mls/nov13/Staley--How-To-Prove-a-Librarys-Relevance.shtml

Canadian Immigrant Integration Program (CIIP)

Canadian Immigrant Integration Program (CIIP)

Partners for Newcomer Success

 

 

Immigration is vital to Canada's population growth and economic prosperity. Yet, while demand for their skills grows, many highly competent newcomers to Canada remain underemployed.

To address this problem, the Government of Canada funded the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC) to develop and implement the Canadian Immigrant Integration Program (CIIP) which prepares newcomers for economic integration while still in their country of origin. Launched as a pilot project in 2007, CIIP is now a four-year program (2010-2014) that is funded by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC).

CIIP provides free pre-departure orientation to Federal Skilled Workers, Provincial Nominees, their spouses and adult dependents, while they are still overseas during the final stages of the immigration process.

CIIP helps immigrants prepare for economic success by providing information, planning and online support through partners in Canada.

CIIP offices are located in China, India, Philippines and the United  Kingdom and services are available in additional service delivery locations. Click here to get a complete list of CIIP service delivery locations.

http://www.newcomersuccess.ca/index.php/en/newcomer-resources/focal-point-partners

RBC-Evergreen Watershed Champions Award

Watershed Champions Award

The RBC-Evergreen Watershed Champions Award recognizes classes that demonstrate learning about their local watershed and action to care for it. The award is open to Canadian classes from Kindergarten to Grade 9. Applications must be submitted by Friday, April 18, 2014.

 

For the 2013–2014 school year, nine awards are available:

• 1 Canadian Award (Grades K–9) – $3,500
• 4 Regional Elementary Awards (Grades K–6) – $2,500
• 4 Regional Intermediate Awards (Grades 7–9) – $2,500

Applications can be submitted starting in September 2013. Please see the "How to Apply" section below for submission guidelines and to download the application form.

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Who Can Apply?

The award is open to Canadian classes from Kindergarten to Grade 9 in publicly funded schools.
Multiple classes may collaborate on lessons and submit a collaborative application. If identified as a winning entry, however, only one award would be given to the group.

(Note: The regional elementary and intermediate awards are divided into the following regions:

• West and Northern Territories (AB, BC, MB, SK, NT, NU, YT)
• Ontario
• Quebec
• East (NB, NL, NS, PEI)

We will also offer awards for the 2014–2015 and 2015–2016 school years.)

 

http://info.evergreen.ca/en/watershed-champions/award

Pathways to Education

For more than a decade, Pathways to Education has helped young people in economically disadvantaged communities attain the education they need to succeed in life. Today, the program runs in 13 communities across Canada.

In 2011, Pathways began a pilot program for literacy in six locations: Regent Park and Scarborough in the Greater Toronto Area; Kitchener and Kingston, Ont.; Winnipeg; and Halifax.

John Beebe, Pathways' manager of tutoring initiatives, says after determining the existing program was working well, the question was: How can it be made better? One of the areas identified as worthy of further development was literacy.

"Many of our students face challenges around succeeding in schools because of weak literacy skills," he says. "There are students who can't get their homework done because they lack some of the core skills."

At the start of Pathway's literacy project, organizers found about 70 per cent of the 66 students recruited to participate in Regent Park, Kitchener and Winnipeg were reading below a third-grade level.

"If you're reading at that level, you're still learning how to read," Beebe says.

"You're not working on higher order thinking skills like inference or developing a rich vocabulary."

 

http://www.windsorstar.com/literacy/raiseareader/Pathways+reading+skills+offered+young+people+disadvantaged+communities/8991364/story.html

Status of Women Canada is launching a Call for Proposals to eliminate Cyber and Sexual Violence against women and girls.

Status of Women Canada is launching a Call for Proposals  to invite organizations to submit a proposal that aims to eliminate Cyber and Sexual Violence against women and girls.

 

Projects under this Call for Proposals fall into two thematic areas:

 

·         Preventing and eliminating cyberviolence (e.g. cyberbullying, internet luring, cyberstalking) against young women and girls.

·         Access to community services to prevent or respond to sexual violence against women and girls

 

 

The deadline for applications under this Call for Proposals is 11:59 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, December 1, 2013.

 

 

Please visit our website for more information.

Crowdfunding the Library

Crowdfunding the Library

By Caroline Lewis on April 17, 2013

Since Kickstarter launched in 2009, everyone from indie bands to technology developers to non-profit organizations has asked themselves, "Will crowdfunding work for me?" Libraries, which often turn to more civic-minded crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo and Fundly, are no exception. But the question remains: does it work?

Cassandra Elton got the idea to establish the Antelope Lending Library in a well-traversed mall on the Southeast side of Iowa City while she was working at an after-school program in a local elementary school. Elton found that her students—primarily from low-income and immigrant families—did not have access to the literary culture for which the city is known.

"We talked to the public library about it and they said, 'Oh we serve the Southeast side from our downtown location.'" Elton disagreed. "I said, 'We need to do more.'"

Elton sought to raise $20,000 to lease a space for the library for a year. She initially looked at Kickstarter, but found that running a library "didn't really fit with the terms of service." Kickstarter explicitly states that a project is "something with a clear end" that can "eventually be completed" and prohibits raising money for "causes."

"And so we found out about Indiegogo, which functions just like Kickstarter, but you can do non-profit endeavors," Elton said.

Non-profits, including libraries, can be found on Kickstarter, but it is most effective for art projects and technology development, according to a recent infographic in the Economist. Indiegogo goes the extra mile to provide non-profits with an additional network of donors by allowing visitors to the site to browse "Causes" with subcategories like "Education" and "Religion." It also permits continual fundraising for the same organization.

One Indiegogo campaign, a few road-bumps, and several helping hands later, the Antelope Lending Library is set to open as a book mobile in June.

The library ultimately did not reach the fundraising goal it set on Indiegogo; the campaign only raised about $13,000. But this did not deter the project. By the time the campaign was over, circumstances had changed, the goal had shifted, and, most importantly, the project had found new local collaborators.

The option of "flexible funding" is a key reason why alternatives like Indiegogo and Fundly appeal to libraries, which also generally have local investors beyond their online crowd campaigns. Kickstarter, which has an "all-or-nothing" policy, returns any money raised to donors if the full fundraising goal is not reached within the set time frame.

Elton said she was frustrated, however, by how much of the money raised on Indiegogo was taken as commission. If a campaign doesn't reach its full fundraising goal on Indiegogo, the site takes a nine percent commission, whereas, if it is reached, it takes only four percent. Across all fundraising platforms, donations made through PayPal sacrifice an additional three percent of the money raised.

Still, Elton said she would use Indiegogo again (albeit with a more moderate fundraising goal).

"You can't really learn about it until you do it," Elton said, "because every project is different and you don't really know how it's going to work out."

There are, however, some insights to be gleaned. For one thing, short-term projects and new projects may benefit most from crowdfunding.

Last year, the Santa Cruz Public Library ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund its participation in a global art project called Inside Out. Project facilitator Mariah Roberts had received a green light from the city, but no money.

In addition to raising the $5,000 required to print the large-scale portraits of community members that would adorn the facade of the downtown library branch for four months, the campaign also raised the profile of the project, which brought future opportunities.

"[Kickstarter] is a great publicity format," Roberts said. "For example, we had folks from the paper who were able to get an email saying, 'Check out the Kickstarter,' and then they watched the video and, all of a sudden, they had something to ask us about. It's just an easy way to start a conversation and buzz around your project."

http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/04/funding/crowdfunding-the-library/#_

So, what does open digital textbooks means to academic, resource and public libraries?

So, what does open digital textbooks means to academic, resource and public libraries?

 

VICTORIA - Twenty open textbooks will be developed for skills training and technical post-secondary subject areas. These 20 open textbooks are in addition to the open, online textbooks already being developed for 40 high enrolment first- and second-year subject areas.

"We're focused on making education more accessible throughout the system, and free online textbooks mean savings and more flexibility for students," said Advanced Education Minister Amrik Virk. "These 20 open textbooks for skills training and technical programs will help us prepare British Columbians with the skills they need for jobs we know are coming."

Subject areas for the additional open textbooks will be aligned with priorities in the BC Jobs Plan and Skills and Training Plan, and could include tourism, technology, trades, or other areas where there is a need for skilled workers. Specific subject areas will be determined over the next few months.

The first 10 additional open textbooks for skills training will be available online for instructors to review them and consider using them for their courses starting September 2015.

 

http://www.newsroom.gov.bc.ca/2013/10/free-online-textbooks-coming-for-skills-training.html

Free Occupation-specific Language Training for newcomers offers

Want to improve your workplace communication skills?

Free Occupation-specific Language Training for newcomers offers

• language training geared to your occupation.
• practical exercises based on actual workplace communications tasks.
• career-planning assistance.
• opportunities to connect with local employers, industries and resources.
  
  

Workplace Communication Skills for Child and Youth Worker

Participate in FREE work-oriented language training

This practical and innovative course will help you

• understand human services workplaces in Ontario, including child-care centres and schools.
• interact clearly and effectively with colleagues, clients, supervisors and the public.
• network and connect with local employers, agencies and employment resources.
• learn how to use your workplace communication training in settings such as
• nursery schools.
• centre and home-based daycares.
• elementary schools.
• high schools.

Small-group exercises based on everyday communication tasks in working with children and youth will help you

• practise common on-the-job communication to improve your workplace language skills.
• develop strong interviewing, networking and career-building communication skills.

This course is for you if

• you have training or experience in the following:
• early childhood education.
• child and youth work.
• your English is at an intermediate level (Canadian Language Benchmarks 6 to 8 or Niveaux de compétence linguistique canadiens of 6 to 8 for courses offered in French).
• you are a permanent resident of Canada or protected person.

 

http://co-oslt.org/en/human-services/