It’s the last month of the year, and we pretty much made it through… A few bumps and bruises but we made it mostly intact. A year ago, I probably wouldn’t have thought as much.

I have written much on the subject, but there was a time where many of our programs were in a precarious situation with us at Prevention CDN-NDG, not precarious in its existence, mind you but precarious that they might not be sitting under our “umbrella” for 2017.

We are currently working on our funding application for our next Tandem CDN-NDG contract. Centre City has decided that they lacked time in dealing with this dossier. They will perhaps relook at it in 2017. So as it stands right now, the Borough decided that it could continue on locally.

These changes would not have been due to lack of demand. Requests from citizens, partners and the rest of the community continue to increase. Could we be available for this or that event? Could we join this table or that committee? Could we help out with this issue? Could we help apply for funding? If we were evaluated on our usefulness/helpfulness, we’d still score pretty high, even after 28 years of existence.

It is a shame however, that we spend so much time putting out funding fires, stopping and re-starting, hurrying up and waiting, so that we can fill out all the applications, ask for letters of support and re-explain what we do and why our work works. I’m all for transparency and evaluation. I believe that funders should sit down with us on an annual basis and ask tough questions, but we really need to relook at the way things are done. One day, longer term funding will be available, maybe not in my career/lifetime, but maybe in the next. One day funders will see that 5-10 year plans give us time and room to see positive change, as opposed to creating needs with a 1-3 year timeframe, than pull funding away and leave many of us scrambling.

Right now, we are in scrambling mode for our Hypersexualization prevention projects. The Minister of Public Security is no longer funding “the adhesion to street gang projects”. We’ve been invited to apply elsewhere, and so far have made four applications to various provincial departments. Four! One has been refused, one has been refused UNLESS they find more money and we wait for two others. So in this time when subjects like sexual exploitation, harassment, consent, bullying and cyberbullying are part of our dialogue, we are forced to wait, before moving forward to help meet the needs in our community. A sincere thank you to our community partners who have supported us in the past few months and have pledged their implication for the future.

Keep your fingers crossed for those programs, and we’ll be sure to keep you updated!

Terri