It's pretty skinny right now. We receive some funding from the Office for Disability Issues under the social development partnerships program, the SDPP-D.
I became executive director five years ago. When I did, DAWN Canada had been in service to Canadian women with disabilities for about 20 years, but my responsibility as the first national executive director was, first and foremost, to establish a national head office and a national strategy for addressing women with disabilities issues.
We had one seed grant from Status of Women at that time. That would have been in 2007. We did a project called “Bridging the Gaps”. That project was to look at and update work that we had done quite a few years ago on access to shelters for women with disabilities and for deaf women. The result of that study was quite clear: nothing had changed significantly for women with disabilities. There were some updates—certainly, yes, there were more ramps at shelters--but in terms of the fundamental practice of inclusion, it wasn't there, and it still isn't there.
As I was saying when I was speaking to Dr. Fry, in terms of the violence against women sector, we're still at the outside of the sector. DAWN has been working hard to develop paradigms for inclusion, including paradigms for inclusion in the women's sector. Women's Worlds 2011 was a wonderful example of that because DAWN was involved for two years in advance of Women's Worlds. As a consequence, two of the plenaries, 39 presenters, and several hundred women with disabilities participated. This was a first, a global first.
As I was going to say, certainly both the Office for Disability Issues and Status of Women had a huge impact on our ability to participate in that, because we were hired as consultants, which was an appropriate way for us to be involved, because we have an expertise. we have the ability to develop those paradigms and practices that can take us from a place where women with disabilities are on the outside. This committee is a wonderful example--