Citizenship and Immigration committee  We would like to see very accessible hubs within the community, where they can go to learn English, get social support and get benefits. They would address a lot of issues. With services around the downtown area, they have to take transport; they don't even know how to read the t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Even in cities, where we mention that it is easier, it is actually not. When we were in Calgary, we saw communities in the northwest and the north central part where there are huge immigrant populations. In some communities they are over 50% of the population, but they don't have

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Our organization doesn't receive any IRCC funding. It is tough because we are doing a lot of this work, but because we are only recognized as an ethnic organization, we are not considered a settlement organization. These are some of the challenges we are facing.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, that is exactly what we need to see, so that this funding does not just go to settlement organizations but also to community organizations that are doing this kind of work.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't have any recommendation in mind for now, but for social inclusion—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  These are very important, because a lot of our clients are quite homebound, as Nazifia said. If they have this kind of support, for example child care, it can release them so they can step out into society. We provide a lot of interpretation services as well, because they need t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I am aware of only one other, in Calgary, called Pebbles in the Sand. It also caters to people with very low literacy, but it provides teaching in English, so sometimes the progress is a little slow because for difficult concepts, when you use a foreign language to explain someth

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Right. Especially when we try to explain difficult concepts, we use our own language to make things retainable and easier to understand.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Before we tried to work with the Sudanese community and the Punjabi community, but there was a lack of infrastructure. We had to organize the class within a house, but this was not very acceptable to our funder because it was not formal enough, so we had to terminate the program.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, the space is one thing and the culture is another thing, how to get people from different parts of the country. Sometimes they don't work in agreement, so bringing people together to be in a classroom is also challenging.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Some of our learners want to look for jobs—maybe Nazifia can also talk about that—but we have a group of people who are actually quite isolated. We want to look at language training that also addresses social inclusion and how to get them involved in the community. It is not th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's just the Stepping Stones and the computer-enhanced learning. For other programs we get United Way or city funding.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Actually, there are a lot of demands for our programs. The East Indian community, for example, is requesting similar programs because the bilingual facilitation models would work for them, and they are more interested in computer-enhanced literacy as well. Even after 15 years w

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The outcomes we want to achieve are that our learners learn basic English skills. Sometimes it's just for social interaction and to navigate life in Canada, but also to bring them out so they are not isolated anymore. It's more than about their finding a job, but also about reduc

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm Lily Kwok, the Executive Director of the Calgary Chinese Community Service Association. I'll give a very brief introduction of CCCSA. We are a non-profit organization that is now 40 years old. Our mission is to connect the Chinese community and other ethnic communities to th