I think there are always improvements that can be made in any government departments and programs, but I think, you know, kudos to the status of women program for responding very well to some of the concerns that women's organizations had about flexibility. And we did this with the blueprint projects, and Suzanne might want to speak more to that, and also with our targeted call for proposals. We are making it much easier for groups to apply, in terms of the paperwork burden, because a lot of women's organizations, as you know, have many volunteers, few paid employees, and usually are on shoestring budgets.
We're making it easier for them to apply. We also have a continuous intake process so that if organizations do not have a project that is ready for funding, we can work with them to try to improve that because they don't always have the capacity within their organization, but we do in our regional offices and at Status of Women Canada here in Ottawa.
We are trying very hard to be very flexible, because we do understand. The majority of organizations we work with are working on shoestring budgets. Even so, in the last four to five years we've been able to fund 500 projects from many different parts of the country. As I said in my opening remarks, these projects really do respond to those who are most in need, whether it's in our aboriginal women's community or in our immigrant community.
Projects have been groundbreaking, working with cultural communities on issues like honour crimes, working in other areas on human trafficking. All of these are very worthy projects, and I think Status of Women Canada has done an excellent job making the application process more accessible, more flexible, and giving us the opportunity to reach out to groups we've never been able to access before.
I think the record is a good one.