UN Platform for Action Committee Manitoba (UNPAC)
ANNUAL REPORT 2008 — 2009

Chairpersons’ Report

After over a year without funding, UNPAC is back! The organization has received three year funding from Status of Women Canada for the Women’s Mentorship Project and the office has been up and running since October. Jennifer deGroot has returned as Executive Director on a part-time basis while Susan Wadien was hired as full-time Project Coordinator. We have also hired our first bookkeeper, Shuping Zhang, who works part-time. We are grateful to the Province of Manitoba for providing funding to allow us to keep our office in the months before we received our grant from Status of Women.

The bulk of our work since October has been focused on the Women’s Mentorship Project which continues the focus of our previous projects, the promotion of women’s economic equality. We continue to use both education and lobbying in these efforts.

Besides the project, some of our other activities for the year include:

Website

We have recently redesigned the UNPAC homepage. Visit us at our new website at www.unpac.ca to check out our new look! We also have a new website for our Women’s Mentorship project and have updated our Gender Budget website and our Women & Economy website. Thanks to Sandy Rubinfeld, Shalomarr Dorey and Web Wizards for their work on the websites.

Open House

Over 40 people attended UNPAC’s Open House January 21, 2009 to learn about UNPAC’s current work and the realities of Burmese newcomer women in Winnipeg. Guest speaker Naw Kay Seng spoke passionately about her life both in Burma and in Canada. It was an inspiring evening with plenty of new connections made and some touching moments as the audience was moved by the life story of our guest speaker. Attendees were also invited to sign letters to the Canadian Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China urgint the country to use their position in the UN Security Council to pressure Burma to make democratic reforms. We also collected donations for Mae Tao clinic in Mae Sot, Thailand which offers medical services to Burmese refugees and migrant workers. Longtime UNPAC members Eira (Babs) Friesen and Muriel Smith were also honoured at the Open House (see below).

Lobbying

We continued the work of our previous Gender Budget Project by communicating regularly with the Government of Manitoba particularly with staff of Treasury Board Secretariat. We welcome their efforts to ensure gender and diversity analysis in the budget process, a multi-year project. We also met recently with staff from Healthy Child Manitoba and Status of Women Manitoba. Our lobbying efforts are greatly enhanced through the letters that come out of our workshops. Women who attend are encouraged and supported in writing a letter to their MLA on issues that matter to them in their communities. Many take up this opportunity.

Budget Day Activities

In the days leading up to Budget Day, an opinion editorial entitled, “Tax Cuts Not the Answer for Manitoba Women” by Jennifer deGroot ran in the Winnipeg Free Press (March 22, 2009) in the ’View from the West’ column. On Budget Day, UNPAC staff and Wise Women advisory committee member Lorna Turnbull, Assistant Professor and Associate Dean at the Faculty of Law of the University of Manitoba, attended the lock-up and media scrum at the Manitoba Legislature. Jennifer and Lorna were interviewed by many media outlets including CJOB, the Winnipeg Sun, Radio Canada, Uptowne and La Liberté. Following Budget Day we sent budget day commentary to our list serve.

Listserve

We kept our members and friends updated on UNPAC’s activities through regular updates to our listserve.

Community Events

Besides our regular forays into the community to deliver workshops, we attended a number of other community events including International Women’s Day events, the RESOLVE conference at the University of Manitoba, a Manitoba Women’s Advisory Council roundtable. Jennifer, Susan and Lorna Turnbull also presented at Global College’s ’Two Faces of Poverty’ conference in early November.

UNPAC’s Continued Growth

Our Coordinating Committee has many new faces ensuring fresh energy and renewal for the organization. We are grateful to all Coordinating Committee members for their vital contributions to UNPAC’s work. Members include: MC (Marie-Claude) Barrette-Molgat, Athena Kovacs, Janis Dahl, Caryn Douglas, Gerri Thorsteinson, Britany Ying Ying Vinluan, Gisèle Saurette-Roch, supported by co-chairs Muriel Smith and Mandy Fraser. Catharine Johannson also stepped in midway through the year as treasurer, replacing Allyson Watts. We look forward to welcoming a number of new Coordinating Committee members next year. We want to express our heartfelt thanks to our out-going Coordinating Committee members including MC (Marie-Claude) Barrette-Molgat and Catharine Johannson for their contributions to UNPAC’s work and mission.

Mandy Fraser and Muriel Smith
Co-chairpersons
May 21, 2009.

Executive Director’s Report

It has been a great pleasure to return to UNPAC after my maternity leave and to serve in the role of UNPAC’s first-time Executive Director. In my part-time role most of my times continues to be used to support the current project, the Women’s Mentorship Project. In the rest of my time I have focused on the smooth operation of the organization, supporting staff and supporting the Coordinating Committee. The Project happenings will be covered in the Project Report so I will focus on some of these other activities.

We were very pleased to hire two new staff people. Susan Wadien has delved into her role as Project Coordinator with great enthusiasm and expertise. We’re also thrilled to have Shuping Zhang as UNPAC’s first-ever Bookkeeper. Both Susan and Shuping bring good humour and much experience to their work.

We have worked hard over the past year to enhance the capacity of our Coordinating Committee. To this end we held our first Coordinating Committee Retreat in October 2008. We took time to get to know each other and to brainstorm UNPAC’s priorities (besides the project) for the year ahead. We hope that the retreat will become an annual event. At each of our monthly Coordinating Committee meetings we held educational sessions on topics such as consensus-based decision-making, how to support staff, archives and minute-taking and how to read a financial statement. These sessions were facilitated by UNPAC Coordinating Committee members as well as by invited guests.

Our new Personnel Committee, made up of myself and Coordinating Committee members Caryn Douglas and Britany Ying Ying Vinluan, are in the process of developing much-needed Personnel Policies. These will be finalized over the next year. The Committee also conducted UNPAC’s first-ever review of a staff member. Caryn Douglas and myself conducted a succesful review of Susan Wadien after her three-month probationary period.

I was thrilled to attend my first Professional Development training. I attended a course called “Creative Arts Facilitation for Transformational Learning” held at the Tatamagouche Centre in rural Nova Scotia. I met other popular education facilitators and had a chance to reflect critically on my popular education practice. I also learned new techniques and methodologies of popular education from the experienced facilitators.

We purchased two new (used) computers for the office thanks to the Computers for Schools program. We have installed an automatic back-up system for our electronic files.

UNPAC’s electronic financial records are now maintained on UNPAC’s computers. We purchased new accounting software and developed a new financial reporting system. We are extremely grateful to the capable Allyson Watts for her support during this transition.

Over the years UNPAC has evolved from a volunteer-driven organization to an organization with staff and an office. Our Coordinating Committee has also had many changes; while many of the original members attended the Beijing conference, many of our new members did not. Hiring an Executive Director has been an attempt to fill in some of the gaps left behind when many of our founders moved on. Developing Personnel Policies and enhancing the capacity of our board is another way to ensure that UNPAC’s work can continue for years to come.

Over the next year we plan to update our by-laws so they are more in-line with our current operation. We will also consider our name and image as we strive to be an organization that both honours the legacy and imagination of the World Conferences on Women while continuing to meet the needs of Manitoba women today.

Jennifer deGroot
Executive Director
May 22, 2009.

Women’s Mentorship Project Report

It’s been a wonderful, whirl-wind ride working as Project Coordinator for the Women’s Mentorship Project. Since October of 2008 we have been busy designing and implementing the new project.

The Women’s Mentorship Project is a capacity-building project that aims to give women knowledge and tools they can use to promote economic equality for women in their communities. We are currently in phase one of this two-part project. As part of phase one, we are facilitating popular education workshops on a wide range of topics that promote women’s economic equality including advocacy, communicating with decision-makers and engaging the media. We have developed a large workshop facilitation package which includes 11 modules from which we can custom-build workshops according to the interests and needs of individual organizations and groups. To date we have held a pilot workshop and 14 community workshops, 11 of them in Winnipeg and three in rural Manitoba. We have two more workshops booked for the spring season and continue to work with other organizations to book workshops for the fall season. We strive to reach a diversity of women including senior women, women living with disabilities, Aboriginal women, immigrant women, rural women and Francophone women.

Differing from the workshops we held during the Gender Budget Project, in this new project we have focused more on forming long-term relationships with our partner organizations, by trying to organize workshop series instead of one-off workshops. As well as providing a chance for participants to delve more deeply into the material, this has also helped us prepare for phase two of the project by giving us a chance to get to know participants. In the next phase we will train participants identified through the workshops in the skills needed for workshop facilitation, event planning and community organizing. Ultimately we will support participants to create and implement a project of their choosing in their community. We will have two intake periods, admitting 10 participants each period. The first intake period will be in October 2009.

The Women’s Mentorship Project receives guidance and oversight by an advisory committee of Wise Women consisting of Muriel Smith, Sue Hudson, Candace St. Cyril, Gerri Thorsteinson, Jackie Hogue and Lorna Turnbull. We are grateful to them for their wisdom and their time! In the coming year, the Wise Women – as well as other volunteers - will lend their experience and guidance to support the mentors as they plan their own projects. I am eternally grateful to each of them for their guidance and support, which has streamlined the project and kept us on track.

To promote our new project we developed a project website and a new project logo. I’d like to thank our web designer from Webwizards, Cindy Leszczynski, and our graphic designer, Denice Girdner, for their creativity, patience and professionalism. We invite you to check out our new website at www.unpac.ca where you can find more information about the Mentorship Project as well as a full list of upcoming workshops.

Lastly, I would like to thank Jennifer for her wise leadership. Jennifer has to be the most unflappable person I have ever met. I am grateful to her for her calmness and quick responsiveness in the face of any complications that arise. I am also grateful to her for letting me find my own way, even as she makes herself available for advice and consultation far beyond the two days a week she is in the office. It has been a pleasure to work with her and learn from her.

I have been honoured to work with and for inspiring women: those who are members of UNPAC, and those who we have met through our workshops. I look forward to working with the Mentorship Project over the next two and a half years!

Susan Wadien
Project Coordinator
May 25, 2009.

Snippets Report

The last Snippets e-newsletter was sent in September 2008, and regretfully there have been no more Snippets since then. The time to collect and organize the material was just too much, as well as the recognition that many of the subscribers have many choices and options to access the amazing amount of information on the Internet regarding women and global issues.

Snippets grew out of the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing. It was a very important way for us all to share and learn, and take action collectively. For over 10 years, regular electronic newsletters were sent, with updates on the global issues, the work of the United Nations, and local events as well. The subscribers grew from maybe a dozen to over 200.

I appreciated everyone’s contribution, and support. Maybe if there is a 5th World Conference we’ ll try it again, or maybe Facebook.

In Peace and Friendship,

Mary Scott
Snippets Editor
May 20, 2009.

Tribute to Eira (Babs) Friesen

Muriel Smith Honoured

Muriel Smith was also honoured at UNPAC’s Open House. Muriel received the Person’s Day Award in October 2008 and she was awarded the Order of Canada on December 28, 2008. Muriel is unable to attend this year’s Annual General Meeting as she will be attending a dinner and awards ceremony where she will be awarded an Honourary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Manitoba.

In recognition for her tremendous accomplishments to UNPAC’s work over the years, UNPAC made her a companion of the Order of UNPAC and awarded Muriel with an honourary lifetime membership.