Community Capacity Archives - SRDC

LINC Sector Coordination

Wallaa Daramlly — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 15:06:50 +0000

This project engages with LINC Sector Coordination stakeholders such as attendees at LINC Gatherings, members of the Settlement Language Working Group and Advisory Group, participants in LINC teacher training, and MOSAIC staff through interviews and focus groups. The goal is to learn what is working, for whom, and why, and to identify areas for adjustment.

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Strengthening the Climate Resilience of People with Disabilities

Wallaa Daramlly — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 17:47:05 +0000

Funded by Accessibility Standards Canada, Strengthening the Climate Resilience of People with Disabilities is a three-year project (2025-2028) led by SRDC in partnership with Eviance and the Canadian Red Cross. This project aims to identify and address barriers to accessibility for people with disabilities in preparing for, responding to, and recovering from climate emergencies. By engaging with a diverse group of people with disabilities through interviews and case studies, the project explores the varied and intersectional capacities and needs of these communities, particularly in relation to climate change impacts.

These discussions focus on understanding how existing accessibility barriers affect the ability of people with disabilities to engage in DRR efforts and how to remove or prevent new barriers. The project findings will help inform accessibility standards in emergency management to better support and meet the diverse needs of people with disabilities across diverse contexts.

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Newcomers with Remote Information and Career Help in British Columbia and Yukon (ENRICH BCY)

Wallaa Daramlly — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 19:26:14 +0000

Led by Douglas College and in partnership with the Yukon Literacy Coalition, this project’s overarching goals are to enhance newcomer settlement and integration in rural and remote regions of British Columbia and the Yukon (BCY). Our approach emphasizes community engagement and local partnerships to co-design online tools and resources that complement rather than duplicate existing in-person services. Specific areas of focus include developing pre-arrival information to enhance migration pathways; facilitating social and economic integration to promote newcomer retention and address local skill and labour needs; supporting truth and reconciliation through the integration of First Nations history, culture, and governance into settlement services; and addressing gaps in existing community and settlement services to improve newcomers’ access to supports. Consultations (in person and remote) with newcomers, employers, First Nations representatives, community leaders, and service providers are used to i) collect information on local contexts, strengths, services, and needs, and ii) co-design and develop ideas for service enhancements to pilot with local communities. Our evaluation focuses on tracking outcomes, identifying areas for improvement, and capturing lessons learned for further enhancement related to program design and delivery.

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Co-Development of a Community Broker Model

Wallaa Daramlly — Sat, 31 May 2025 18:33:20 +0000

Six Local Immigration Partnerships (LIPS) in Burnaby, Surrey, Vancouver, New Westminster, Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows, and Langley, serving the most diverse and fastest growing municipalities in BC are collaborating to develop and implement a Community Broker model to enhance newcomer integration outcomes in their communities, especially among new and emerging racial and ethnic groups. SRDC is supporting the Burnaby LIP and its partnering LIPS to co-develop a community broker model. SRDC is undertaking a literature review, key informant interviews, and focus groups with newcomers, as well as design sessions with LIPs to develop a model adapted to the local context.

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Connecting Canada: Testing Innovative Immigrant Attraction Approaches While Building Attraction Capacity in Smaller Urban and Rural Communities

Wallaa Daramlly — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 13:49:16 +0000

Connecting Canada will test the effectiveness of newcomer attraction capacity building initiatives in smaller urban and rural (SUR) communities. Knowledge and relationships gained from 3 years of SDI-funded research that connected pre-arrival immigrants with SUR employers will be leveraged. SUR community feedback has shown a need for collaborative capacity building mechanisms and shared resources. The project aims to expand communities’ capacity as well as build evidence and knowledge on the effectiveness of varying service interventions. Connecting Canada targets SUR communities across Canada and the immigrants who might be interested in settling in those communities. This project aims to test a variety of capacity-building measures, working intensively with 3 anchor communities, broadly with at least 30+ additional communities and engaging at least 5,000 newcomers. SRDC is the project’s research and evaluation partner. Our role is to develop a newcomer attraction capacity index and to implement it as well as to evaluate the project’s progress towards anticipated results.

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Strengthening the Capacity of Organizations to Meet the Employment Skills Needs of Francophone Newcomers in Minority Situations

Wallaa Daramlly — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 18:06:15 +0000

The Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC), in partnership with the Coalition ontarienne de formation des adultes (COFA), will develop innovative, integrated and adapted adult learning resources to support the development of skills (e.g., socio-emotional, linguistic) for the employability and integration of Francophone newcomers in Francophone minority communities. The project will build the capacity of organizations working in the areas of immigration, literacy and basic skills, employability and language training, and create strategic partnerships between organizations with complementary expertise. These partnerships will support sharing of promising practices and strengthen the capacity of service providers to serve Francophone or Francophile clients from immigrant backgrounds, supporting services to immigrant populations while enhancing their employability and skills development.

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Analysis of the Labour Market Challenges and Workforce Development Needs of BC’s Non-Profit Housing Sector

Wallaa Daramlly — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 16:35:43 +0000

Non-profit housing providers face significant challenges in recruiting and retaining staff due to increasingly complex tenant needs, an aging workforce, and the necessity for specialized knowledge in asset management and energy efficiency. Staffing shortages and the difficulty of attracting professionals to non-urban areas exacerbate these issues. Additionally, there is a need for Indigenous-led training programs and the potential professionalization of housing-related careers. This project aims to address these challenges by scanning relevant secondary data sets to capture insights into labour market characteristics and trends relevant to the non-profit housing sector’s workforce as well as develop and implement a survey of provincial sector workers that identifies opportunities for capacity building and policy work to support BC’s non-profit housing sector.

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Girls’ Mental Health Project Evaluation

Wallaa Daramlly — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:09:19 +0000

Building on the evidence review update for Girls’ Fund programming, the Canadian Women’s Foundation (CWF) is piloting anti-oppressive mental health support training and capacity building for up to six Girls’ Fund grantees. These additional supports (i.e., training and a toolkit) will offer grantees promising, evidence-based practices to increase protective factors using a strengths-based and anti-oppressive approach. As programs adopt these additional supports, SRDC is designing and implementing an evaluation strategy to capture the learnings from the pilot.

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Family Capacity Advocate Program Evaluation – Phase 2

Wallaa Daramlly — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 12:36:54 +0000

The Family Capacity Advocate program at Britannia Woods Community House (BWCH) in Ottawa supports families who have a loved one from the ages of 12-25 at risk of proximity with the criminal justice system. SRDC initially assisted BWCH in planning and piloting an evaluation of this new program when it launched in 2021. Now, building on our previous work, we are collaborating closely with BWCH to carry out a second phase of implementation and outcome evaluation of the Family Capacity Advocate program, with a focus on participatory approaches and evaluation capacity building. SRDC will review and refine existing quantitative data tools used by BWCH staff to collect client data; collect and analyze additional qualitative data from clients; and prepare a fulsome report synthesizing the findings across all available data sources. The final evaluation report will assist BWCH in effectively capturing and communicating the story of the Family Capacity Advocate program’s implementation and outcomes.

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Archetypes of Household Food Insecurity & Effective Interventions – Review of the Literature

Wallaa Daramlly — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 12:13:07 +0000

SRDC is undertaking a comprehensive review of the literature to synthesize existing knowledge about the effectiveness of interventions, at program and policy/systems levels, in reducing household food insecurity in Canada and similar contexts, with a focus on what works, for whom, and under what conditions. Based on the available body of evidence on existing interventions, we are developing ‘archetypes’ of key groups of people who experience household food insecurity, with a view to understanding which interventions work best for which groups, based on unique needs/barriers, while also identifying current gaps in knowledge about appropriate interventions for some groups. By exploring the contexts and typologies of interventions that show the greatest promise in benefiting various archetypes of food insecure households, we strive to inform internal strategy for policy, program, and investment action by the Maple Leaf Centre for Food Security, in support of the Centre’s bold goal to reduce household food insecurity in Canada by 50 per cent by 2030.

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