Thank you. It's my pleasure. It's great seeing some local faces around the table.
YWCA is a national and international movement. Many of you are probably already familiar with our work. In Halifax we have outcome areas from child care to housing, from financial literacy to youth empowerment. We serve one million young women and families annually in 200 communities across this country.
Our recommendations to you focus on that first-hand knowledge of serving over one million Canadians annually. We see these as first voices represented at this table as well as the hat of a service provider trying to meet their needs.
I want to share with you some examples of what is working within the sphere of education. We know that education is a most significant factor in determining income. We also know that we're going to need to position ourselves strategically in order to fare well in this new global climate. How do we make sure we have the right educated matches with where our economy needs to go, that at the same time can support lifting individuals who are most at risk out of poverty? We have some local solutions for you.
The first is local-based training programs, employment training programs for those who have experienced multiple barriers to unemployment. HRSDC has been a strong partner in these programs, of course, and now with a service exchange with the province, we work with both partners in delivering these programs.
One fine example was a women in transition program that the YWCA launched some 25 years ago. One of the graduates, Wanda Hill, a single mother of two young children at the time, was just two weeks away from having her employment insurance run out and then she would have been faced with income assistance. She was able to get a referral to our employment training program. She completed the program. She became employed by the YWCA, and 21 years later she is our housing program manager. That's just one example of success.
This program trained hundreds of women, with a 98% successful employment rate at the end of the program. I wanted to give you this example from 25 years ago to show you the return on investment for community-based employment programs. They are an essential component to a poverty reduction strategy.
Fast-forwarding 25 years, YWCA Halifax has implemented a new version of this type of employment program, focusing on those who have the most significant barriers to employment. The employment program we have is called LAUNCH. It's for young women who have experienced multiple and significant barriers to employment. Some 80% of our participants had not graduated from high school; 80% were single mothers. They all left the program with a job or with a school plan, to register for post-secondary education.
These are just examples of the local assets, the local solutions to make sure that we are working towards the global strategy of a poverty reduction strategy.
One of our challenges, as well, is funding. The women In transition program was cut in the mid-nineties. Everything is project-funded now. Our first employment program, while it was renewed in 2005-06, was then not renewed because of funding. Each contract is renewed for a 52-week period. We can't sustain traction with respect to keeping our talented staff or to continuing to serve the clients who are turning to us more and more. So funding agreement challenges are significant in order to maintain the momentum of really making progress towards alleviating and preventing poverty.
The second issue, again in the theme of education, is affordable housing. Affordable housing cross-cuts with education. In Nova Scotia we have among the highest tuition rates in Canada. We also have some of the highest rates of single mothers in Canada. In fact, in order for a single mother to access education, she needs to put her family at risk of homelessness. In Halifax, research indicates that a single mother has an income gap of $300 a month in order to pursue post-secondary education. So ironically, a single mother has to put her family at risk of homelessness in order to secure education that will lead to income security and alleviation of poverty across intergenerational lines.
In 2006-07 we were able to secure funding from the then SCPI program. We secured a capital grant, we secured a small apartment building, and for just over a year now we've been offering affordable supportive housing for single mothers so they can pursue education. It's now supported by United Way.
This is another example, a community-based solution, of how we can support those who need it the most to get the education they need, to combat intergenerational poverty, and enable women to get the skills they need to break that cycle of poverty for themselves and their families. Seventy-five per cent of the women in this program have experienced family violence. We've been able to help women who have been homeless get an education. These are the kinds of solutions we need more of across Canada, so keeping the HPI program is an absolute essential component to reducing poverty and enabling people to access education.
Other recommendations include recognizing that early learning is a core component to alleviating and preventing poverty. We know in Halifax, for example, through the Understanding the Early Years project, that upwards of two-thirds of the community in Spryfield is a core area of concern, and that half of those children are not school-ready and will never catch up. How are we to gain traction on alleviating and preventing poverty if a significant subset of our population does not have the social and development skills or framework to have success at school?
We know that research after research will point to the fact that early learning is a must for lifelong learning, and we know that early learning is a means by which women can participate in the workforce. Early childhood education is a means to develop our economy and a means to prevent and alleviate poverty.
In sum—I know I've gone over my time—I didn't speak to financial literacy, but perhaps I can speak to that later. We need to look at the horizontal policy alignment within the federal government. The poorest of the poor are women. They are disabled women. They are aboriginal women. They are older women. If we're going to gain traction on a poverty reduction strategy, it needs to have a gender lens. And in order to achieve progress on poverty reduction, we need to have a women's equality mandate in our country, which means restoring research and advocacy within the Status of Women Canada mandate, funding those areas of priority, because we can't achieve poverty alleviation without achieving women's equality. And we can't achieve women's equality or poverty reduction if we don't align government policies and programs to achieve those mutual ends.
Thank you very much for this opportunity.