A longtime partner has awarded Coady Institute a $30,000 grant in support of Indigenous women.
The Donner Canadian Foundation funding will help Coady enhance its award-winning Indigenous Women in Community Leadership (IWCL) program for the coming decade. The grant will also ensure participation of Métis women in a newer program of online workshops and courses with specific curriculum and resources that will benefit communities.
“This funding means additional opportunities for Métis women leaders and that’s exciting. It means that we can purposefully engage with Métis women by providing scholarships and online workshops, and it gives us the chance to gather and develop Métis specific leadership resources.”
Eileen Alma, Coady’s Director of the International Centre for Women’s Leadership, says the funding will provide scholarships for Indigenous women to attend a Coady online course, one full scholarship for an Indigenous woman to attend the Indigenous Women in Community Leadership program in 2021, and support the development of a case study on Métis women’s leadership.
“We also plan to refine our networking platform to encourage further connectivity among our Indigenous partnerships, beyond just the existing women’s leadership alumnae network,” Eileen says.
“Our next steps include education tools for the virtual community such as interactive presentations, online information and discussions designed to inspire, empower, and support community members and to feature our graduates.”
Coady will also look at a mix of virtual webinars and case study development throughout the year that expands, cultivates, and strengthens Indigenous leadership drawing on the issues of the day.
“This funding means additional opportunities for Métis women leaders and that’s exciting,” Karri-Lynn Paul, Indigenous Program Lead, says.
“It means that we can purposefully engage with Métis women by providing scholarships and online workshops, and it gives us the chance to gather and develop Métis specific leadership resources.”
The Donner Canadian Foundation has provided numerous grants to Coady over the course of the past 20 years.
“It has been a privilege for the Donner Canadian Foundation to support Coady International Institute in its study and practice of community-based development over many years,” Helen McLean, Executive Director, Donner Canadian Foundation, says.
“By providing relevant programs that help participants make a positive difference in their own communities, the Institute effectively promotes leadership and community change. At this time, we are particularly pleased to be able to support Coady’s work in encouraging Indigenous women to further develop their leadership skills and abilities for community-led and community-driven development.”
Coady’s Executive Director, Gord Cunningham, says the Donner Canadian Foundation has been a “wonderful partner” over the course of two decades.
“What we appreciate about Donner the most is the Foundation’s willingness to take risks on new ideas with potential for high impact,” Gord says.
“Donner Canadian Foundation helped Coady launch the Institute’s Asset-Based and Community-Driven Development (ABCD) area and the Foundation was also there with us at the beginning of the Institute’s work directly in Indigenous communities.”
Gord notes that previous investments by Donner have been high impact in communities in Canada and around the globe, catalytic for the Institute, and that Coady has been able to leverage investments many times over the amounts of the original grants.
Learn more about Coady’s Indigenous Women in Community Leadership (IWCL) program from Karri-Lynn:
William H. Donner established the Donner Canadian Foundation in 1950. In the mid-1960s, the Foundation began to focus on specific program interests, among these, research on public policy. The Donner family chose Canada’s centennial year, 1967, to embark on a course of professional grant making that has contributed well over $150 million to almost 2,500 projects across Canada and around the world.