Good afternoon. I'm Katie Rosenberger, the executive director of AMSSA; and I'm with my colleague Sabrina Dumitra, who is our manager of settlement and integration programs. I'm going to begin and then Sabrina will take over. We'll go back and forth.
The Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies of British Columbia, AMSSA, is the provincial umbrella association for agencies serving newcomers. Our organization strengthens its 70 member agencies as well as hundreds of community stakeholders with the knowledge, resources and support they need to fulfill their mandates to serve newcomers and build culturally sensitive communities. AMSSA provides support to a broad range of settlement service providers and other stakeholders in B.C.
Each province has an umbrella association, with the four Atlantic provinces being represented by one umbrella. Not all IRCC-funded organizations are AMSSA members. Conversely, not all AMSSA members are IRCC-funded, as we were established in 1977 and have been working in the field of multiculturalism and diversity for over 40 years.
AMSSA works with our members to provide a common voice to funders, policy-makers, community members and external stakeholders on issues such as immigration, resettlement, settlement, integration and diversity. AMSSA works with our colleagues across the country through representation on the National Settlement Council.
As the umbrella organization for B.C., AMSSA is uniquely positioned to build the needed partnerships between the settlement sector and all four levels of government—municipal, provincial, federal and indigenous—as well as the private sector. AMSSA's funding comes from IRCC through the B.C. settlement programming, as well through an IRCC national contribution agreement. We are also funded by the Province of British Columbia to provide sector support to organizations that work with non-IRCC eligible clients and have project funding from different organizations such as Canadian Heritage, Western University and Dalhousie University, to name a few.
At this time, we are also in negotiations with ESDC for a contract to enhance sector knowledge and information-sharing for those organizations that serve temporary foreign workers.