Evidence of meeting #25 for Status of Women in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:10 p.m.
Director, Community Engagement, Plan International Canada Inc.
I'm not sure at this point.
4:10 p.m.
Director, Community Engagement, Plan International Canada Inc.
Yes, you're out of my scope here. I'm the director of community engagement.
4:10 p.m.
Director, Community Engagement, Plan International Canada Inc.
But it is online. You can definitely go to plancanada.ca, and it's all very transparent.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
You've answered very well.
With regard to the issues in and around the outreach into some of the neighbourhoods and so on, how do you get these different clubs started in some of these high-priority neighbourhoods?
4:10 p.m.
Director, Community Engagement, Plan International Canada Inc.
We primarily work directly with the school boards. Our number one target is to work with school boards, and we have been highly successful by working through educators. In our pilot year, we have just over 300 clubs registered. That's primarily in Ontario. However, we have club representation across the country, in seven provinces and a territory.
For year one we're very happy about it. What we have realized is that the content and the modules—I have a copy for the clerk of the modules and the materials—are definitely something educators are looking for.
I speak on an ongoing basis at teacher federation conferences, safe schools, and guidance counsellor federations. Our access has been primarily through the school system.
We also work with Girls Action Foundation, which is a complementary network to the school system. Girl Guides of Canada is another group we've been working in partnership with.
It's very much a collaboration of a variety of organizations.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
That's an awful lot of groups already in a short period of time. Congratulations on doing that.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
If you were to go into a school, for instance, would you be speaking only to the girls, or would you be speaking to a group audience about the program?
4:10 p.m.
Director, Community Engagement, Plan International Canada Inc.
The program is directed towards girls, and we don't shy away from that. The content is very feminine and female directed; however, we do a lot of presentations in full group settings.
Really what we do is we try to engage youth leaders. In a high school setting, this is youth led, youth driven, and adult mentored. In a primary or grade 8 and under setting, it is an educator-driven program. We have two different target audiences who use the materials.
In the high schools, though, we rely on youth leaders. They have taken ownership of the program, and they take it to their school system. A lot of the resources we have are very much transferrable to various audiences. We have everything from the environment club to the self-esteem club for girls using the materials.
The traction has been incredible, but in a multi-faceted way. It's very much a spider chart right now, which we're doing a good job of monitoring, but it's appealing to many more audiences than we ever dreamt it would. The financial literacy one, for example, is easily transferrable into the boys' space, but it's still under the auspices of the Because I am a Girl initiative.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
I think that's commendable. But it always has to go to that other half, which is the boys, and how they factor into all of this. Will you be developing a similar module as a component of Because I am a Girl?
4:10 p.m.
Director, Community Engagement, Plan International Canada Inc.
I'll be honest. We have been asked, especially by the school boards, to develop a gender neutral version. There are some modules we are looking at doing right now. Right now our capacity is such that our focus has to be on the Because I am a Girl initiative. However, the five-year plan is definitely to create modules.
We have a youth leadership program that is gender neutral. We also have a primary program that is gender neutral and that uses the resources we've developed. We've modified various parts of the resources, but Because I am a Girl will always be girl-centric.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
Ms. Coté, just quickly, from your perspective, what is your organization doing when it comes to doing additional training and leadership to encourage women to seek out management positions and to push themselves up that ladder?
March 26th, 2012 / 4:10 p.m.
First Vice-President, Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs
Currently we have a mentorship program, within BPW itself, within the national, provincial, and local chapters. There is also a political training program in development that is going to be coming up. I believe that it's starting in British Columbia and Ontario. That program is still in development, though, and I don't think it will be released for at least another year or two.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
4:15 p.m.
NDP
The Chair NDP Irene Mathyssen
Thank you.
Now we'll start our five-minute round with Ms. Bateman, please.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Joyce Bateman Conservative Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to both of the witnesses today. I very much appreciate the information you've brought us.
I really want to start with Plan Canada, because I want to hear a little more about Because I am a Girl. I know just how struck by and supportive of it our Minister of the Status of Women, the Honourable Rona Ambrose, is.
I want you to drill a little deeper on this. First, you spoke about three essential criteria for success. You referred to self-esteem, financial literacy, and the integration or the utilization of the other 50% of the population. Can you start on the financial literacy piece first?
Certainly if you want to first speak to anything about the broader program and the importance of the broader program, that would be very helpful too.
4:15 p.m.
Director, Community Engagement, Plan International Canada Inc.
Because I am a Girl is an initiative launched in 2009 to raise awareness of the issues and rights around girls. It started primarily in our work, because globally, we know that investing in girls is the most direct route to social change. That has been proven over and over, and people much brighter than I am are speaking about that in various places. That's why we focused on that. To apply it to Canada, to bring this domestic point of view to the work we're doing, is critical.
Really, what we've done through the girl club program, in the life skills areas I was talking to you about, is identify that the issues that affect girls globally are the same. They just manifest differently. It's about identifying how they manifest and then providing for the needs of the girls, regardless of where we live.
This is a program that can be rolled out in any country around the world, because the issues are the same. When you look at some of the marginalized communities, such as the aboriginal community, for example, the issues that affect aboriginal girls are the same as what I've described. They are just manifesting differently. It's about identifying how they're manifesting, and then providing for the need state.
That's the premise and the hypothesis of this. We're thrilled about—
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
4:15 p.m.
Director, Community Engagement, Plan International Canada Inc.
Yes, on financial literacy, students, regardless of whether they are boys or girls, are graduating from high school without any sort of knowledge around managing a budget or credit. Financial skills in general are just not things they are taught in school or at home, so they are going into university with very limited knowledge. In fact, our baseline study showed that over 32% of young people polled in our baseline study had absolutely no knowledge of financial literacy whatsoever, zero. Over 32% had zero, and those who said they knew a little bit about financial literacy bring that number up to over 50%.
Young people are graduating from high school without any knowledge of how to manage their money. Girls are especially affected, of course, because as Ms. Coté pointed out, they are not negotiating their salaries and then when they do get their salaries, as limited as they are, they don't know how to manage them.
These are very fundamental skills that certainly would provide prosperity for girls and women across the country. It's not just girls, by the way. It's women too. Economic security relies on knowing how to manage your money. In our module on financial literacy, the information was provided to us by Visa Canada because they spent millions of dollars developing financial literacy programs, which we've leveraged—everything from understanding how to balance a budget, knowing the difference between need and want, and knowing how to get a credit rating in this country by managing credit card debt. How does one apply for a student loan and manage that loan effectively? These are all very basic, fundamental skills that young people are not graduating high school with. They are going into university with absolutely no knowledge of financial literacy.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative