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After 18 years as the leader of Community Financial Counselling Services (CFCS) in Winnipeg, Executive Director John Silver, is retiring from a career of outstanding service to the community.

An unwavering force for good, John has led the CFCS team with courage, empathy, determination, and integrity. Under John’s visionary leadership, CFCS enhanced and expanded a range of financial empowerment programs designed to reduce poverty and increase the financial capacity of all Manitobans, all longstanding issues of equity that were only exacerbated during the pandemic.
 

Since October 2018, the Financial Empowerment Network of Nova Scotia (FENNS) has worked to raise the levels of financial empowerment and financial literacy across Nova Scotia. Representing a broad spectrum of public, private and non-profit sector groups, we bring together organizations working to increase financial understanding with organizations whose work is directly affected by that lack of understanding. 

In SEDI’s recent submission to the Ontario government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy consultation, we strongly encouraged the government to take advantage of a new community approach to reducing poverty called Financial Empowerment.

The Great Recession of 2008 detonated an explosion of interest in financial literacy in most industrialized countries, including Canada. However, the force of the explosion in our country, at least at the federal level, has waned considerably since then.