Thank you, sir. I had to completely reduce my speaking remarks.
We have a pilot project. It's one of four demonstration sites across the country, and the aim is to increase access to government initiatives like the Canada learning bond and to support low- and moderate-income families in saving for their children's education.
What we soon learned was that it was difficult to encourage low-income families to save for their children's education when they didn't know how to manage their own budget. So we moved towards financial literacy. One woman we helped, for example, was a single mother living in her car with her two-year-old and she was steps away from having that child taken away from her.
The financial literacy has been about helping families live within their means, which has led to making better choices for themselves and then to economic empowerment. But it's a basic building block of supporting families in living within their means. And the results have been extraordinary.
But it's not easy work to do. For example, one 17-year-old single mother we helped was sent off to the bank after we supported her in saving. We helped her develop a plan to save for the $35 it took to buy the birth certificate and we helped her get to the Service Canada office so she could get the social insurance number for her child. We then sent her off to the bank. Well, she left the bank with a credit card. So we realized we needed to step up and intensify the support to make sure she was understanding and actioning the financial literacy for herself and not just opening an RESP for her child.
The point of this project, though, is that it is helping low- and moderate-income families stay within their means, make better choices for themselves, and then seek to change their economic status. And it's absolutely incredible the results we've had.
The project ends in 2010. If I had one thing I would do with core funding, this is what I would do with core funding. I would make sure that families who are experiencing an economic crisis had the ability to navigate through that crisis and empower their families to live within their means. So it is--