Canadian Women's Foundation

Published purpose

This 36-month project will build the capacity of sexual assault centres to respond to the immediate health and safety crisis posed by the current COVID-19 pandemic and in doing so to continue their important work to advance gender equality in Canada. The organization will develop a process to disburse funding to sexual assault centres serving women and children victims of gender-based violence, including domestic violence, with the aim of addressing centre’s specific capacity and emergency preparedness needs. It will then coordinate the gathering, consolidation and analysis of information from ultimate recipient reporting on how funding was used. Other activities may be undertaken, as needed, including the transfer of knowledge on sexual assault centre needs, impacts, and responsive solutions to COVID-19. In October 2020, following the Government of Canada announcement of an additional $50M in emergency COVID-19 support, an additional $20,600,000 was provided to expand the current project to provide additional funding to sexual assault centres (based on the requested needs) and support women’s organizations and other organizations offering significant GBV supports and services to women, outside of Québec, to prepare surge capacity to deal with anticipated influx seeking support as a result of increased gender-based violence during the COVID 19 pandemic, and to support their ability to address, prevent and reduce gender-based violence. In May 2021, additional supplemental funding of $7,197,267 was provided to CWF in order to support women’s organizations and other organizations offering significant GBV supports and services to women that were deemed eligible under the application process for funding but were unable to receive funding due to oversubscription and limited funds being available. In August, 2021, further supplemental funding of $7,506,000 was provided to fund an additional 93 eligible organizatio