Canada announces new funding to support the advancement of newcomer women and their families

To help newcomers settle, adapt and integrate into Canadian society, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), in partnership with provinces, territories and settlement providers, has been delivering programs and services to migrants and providing stakeholders necessary funding to support these initiatives.

A new funding of $947,370 has recently been announced for St. Joseph Immigrant Women’s Center to continue delivering settlement services to an estimated 530 newcomers in Hamilton and surrounding area. In addition to already granted over $2.5 million for this organization in 2008, this new funding will specifically be used to start a new Family Settlement Center in addition to support the essential settlement services including language and job skills training, finding job and getting settled in their new community. The new proposed Family Settlement Center in East Mountain area will specialize in providing settlement services to newcomer women and their families, support their advancement and full participation in the community.

Similarly, a new funding of more than $8.4 million has been announced for five partner agencies in the Kitchener-Waterloo region to deliver settlement services, including language training and employment-related support, to new immigrants. These five agencies include the following: YMCA of Kitchener-Waterloo ($4,330,299), Kitchener-Waterloo Multicultural Center ($411,306), English at First ($848,065), Waterloo Catholic District School Board ($2,861,477) and Conestoga College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning ($36,539). This funding is expected to help an estimated 1,200 immigrants in Kitchener-Waterloo area.

Few weeks earlier, Conestoga College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning has been granted $3.2 million for developing and delivering brand new English-language training services to meet the increasingly diverse needs of newcomers. That funding was provided to Conestoga under the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program to train more than 250 newcomers in Kitchener-Waterloo area.

Likewise, the YMCA Cross Cultural and Community Services in Kitchener-Waterloo and Cambridge has recently received $1.4 million to fund a business mentoring program for immigrants, developed and administered by YMCA.

These funding for essential settlement services and advancement of newcomer women and their families to Ontario are provided under the $920 million Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement (COIA) over five years and are part of $1.4 billion package over five years to provinces and territories other than Quebec, which was committed by the Canadian federal government in budget 2006.