Let me do the best I can on that.
A lot of the changes you can read in the department report. I know it's been tabled, and if you haven't had an opportunity to have a look at it, I would encourage you to, because there is a lot of good news within that departmental review.
Of course, in Budget 2007 we did announce an additional $10 million a year for Status of Women Canada, so now we do have a higher level of funding.
I talked earlier about the increase in the number of organizations receiving money. It's allowed us to widen our reach across the country. It's an open and competitive funding program now, with a significant uptick in the number of organizations applying for funding. Of the 69% I noted in saying that we've seen an increase in the number of organizations, 41% of those are actually new first-time people coming in and receiving funding and opportunities. Some of the organizations have been quoted in the paper saying they had projects sitting on their desks for ten years and it was under the leadership of this government that they were finally given the resources to deliver them, implement them, and see some real action on the ground.
I hear that a lot, and I think that's very positive. Because we did a lot of research for a lot of years—a lot of studies telling us what we needed to do, what was wrong—our government has taken the very positive approach of giving the resources to some of these organizations who said “I know what to do; just give me the tools to be able to deliver this directly to women on the ground”. So we are seeing that.
For 2007 and 2008, there were 181 new projects funded. And we're seeing beyond just simply funding more projects. The performance report talked about the results these programs are getting. Clare could speak in more detail to some of those results and the measurements we use to see those results.
On the community fund and the partnership fund, the community fund is more of a granting side, where we've seen the funding substantially increase. But then we have the partnership fund, where we work with community organizations and find donations. And sometimes provincial levels of government are a part of that process, where we develop a partnership and it can go for two and three years to help an organization develop a program, but at the same time with the hopes that maybe it could be something that could be taken up by the province at a later date if it were viewed as somewhat of a pilot project.
And I'm happy to provide the committee with a list of organizations that have received funding. Perhaps the committee could sit at another time and we could walk you through some of the specific projects that have received funding: what they were attempting to do, what they have achieved, and the time they have been operating. I know that many of you around the table would probably be very interested to see some of those results.