Blog

June is National Indigenous History Month, a time meant to reflect on the history, heritage and rich diversity of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples across Canada. It is also a time to honour and celebrate the contributions of Indigenous peoples across the country. For many working with Indigenous communities it serves an additional purpose in acknowledging both large and grass-roots organizations striving to create positive change in their communities and Canada at large. 

As we celebrate the retirement of financial empowerment champions, Katie Walker and Hélène Ménard, we take the time to reflect on their legacy of work, the impact they’ve had in their organizations and community and the ingredients that make them true champions of financial empowerment.
 
As they embark on their next chapter, it is clear they’ll be leaving big shoes to fill.

We are Allison Meserve (Prosper Canada), Rochelle Zorzi and Liz Martin (Cathexis Consulting). In this post, we highlight the process we used to co-develop shared indicators for six organizations involved in a national project and what we’ve learned along the way. We hope this will be useful for your own funder-non-profit relationships!

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. 

There is no doubt that the ability to leverage innovative and useful tools such as Zoom, smart phones and other video platforms has ensured that during the pandemic, important meetings, relationships and support networks could be maintained. However, in our zeal to embrace technology and its ability to keep us connected we are reminded that, in some cases, this simply cannot replace, nor should it, the experience of being able to connect face-to-face.