Practice

Sustainable Funding Gaps: A Key Challenge

As this work comes to an end in 2022/ 2023 at a time where concerns for potential federal funding cuts to Women and Gender Equality in future years (set to end in 2024/2025), CGSHE stands alongside others across Canada in advocating for the critical need to support and advocate for increased and sustainable funding across Canada for women, gender equality and LGBTQ/2S-led projects. Of note, while these funds ($160,000/yr for 5 years) were relatively modest compared to research funding (e.g. NIH, CIHR), they were absolutely critical not just to support convening of criminalized survivors and providers to share what they saw as promising practices and systemic gaps for GBV programming across Metro Vancouver; but to also help support and augment GBV supports provided by a range of UBC and SFU community-engaged research projects operated out of a Community Research Hub in Vancouver’s DTES and affiliated with CGSHE. As funding to do outreach, supports and wrap-around referrals; have a community space to convene, host, and support community partners are rarely part of community-engaged research funding, and yet absolutely needed to do this important work, these funds helped provide additional space and supports to help researchers working with criminalized GBV survivors and affected communities.

The project supported hosting virtual and in-person working groups with GBV providers and survivors to share challenges, gaps and ways to collaborate, including challenges of pandemic restrictions on GBV programs and supports; alongside community expert consultations and in-depth interviews with a range of criminalized GBV survivors, providers and partner organizations (SWUAV, Atira, Prison Collaboration) across Vancouver to share their ideas to inform criminalized survivor-centred promising practices; identify ongoing policy gaps, and systemic challenges in supporting criminalized survivors to advocate for change and sustainability.

Critically, these funds also helped support and/or augment existing supports for criminalized survivors, in partnership with community:

• Scaling up and supporting van outreach led by experiential sex work and nursing team (night and daytime), including van purchase, maintenance and resources
• Supporting outreach supplies, creation of resources, and referrals shared – both drop-in nights and outreach
• Indigenous cultural safety and reconciliation work – including Elder engagement; Indigenous Women’s Arts Collective mural project; creation of the Indigenous Resource library
• Providing space, food, resources to host and support ongoing community / peer-led organizations and events, including drop-in days by other GBV support organizations to create care linkages
• Scaling up and supporting frontline outreach supports for and with a range of affected communities
• Offering community hub space for UBC & SFU projects that work with criminalized survivors and affected communities to use and meet (including sex workers, people living with HIV, im/migrant communities): 20% of WAGE funds are in-kind support for direct operational costs (community hub rent and front desk support person(s)) that were critical and so rarely included in community funding
• Organizing and hosting events and knowledge sharing focused on policy change and advocacy with criminalized survivors and providers on structural and policy gaps needed to better support criminalized GBV survivors