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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Waterloo Region – April 1, 2022 – As the world celebrated Women’s History Month, March seemed like the perfect time to mark the beginning of the environmental scan for Capacity Canada’s new project – Makeover: Women’s Leadership Co-Creation Studio: Advancing Equitable Nonprofit Sector Change.
The environmental scan intends to develop a baseline assessment of gender diversity across a sample of charitable sector boards and organizations in the Waterloo Region. The assessment will gather the knowledge, understanding and awareness of organizational cultural practices related to gender, equity and inclusion across boards and organizations and within the broader charitable sector. It will also explore the impacts of gender exclusion across boards and in senior leadership roles.
The first group meeting for the project brought together the advisory table that included members from five partnering agencies: Coalition of Muslim Women, Women’s Crisis Services of Waterloo Region, YWCA of Cambridge, Sexual Assault Centre of Waterloo Region, and SHORE. Kazi Mitul Mahmud, the newest Capacity Canada member, also joined the team as the Project Coordination and Communication Lead.
The 15-month project, funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE), will support a feminist response and recovery from the current impacts of COVID-19 through systemic change. Capacity Canada will achieve this by addressing systemic barriers to women’s underrepresented participation within both services’ delivery leadership and governance roles of non-profit organizations.
At the end of the project, Capacity Canada will have contributed to addressing systemic barriers by advancing inclusive policies and practices, encouraging more equitable and effective sharing of resources, increasing networks and collaboration to accelerate systemic change, supporting positive distribution of authority, voices, and decision-making power, and finally addressing persistent harmful gender norms and attitudes to support women’s equality.
Capacity Canada acknowledges the support of WAGE for this project and is thankful for the opportunity it has given us. The WAGE works to advance equality with respect to sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression through the inclusion of people of all genders, including women, in Canada’s economic, social, and political life.
