C2P2

The Canadian Centre for Pollution Prevention (C2P2, Suite 134) is relatively new to the Robertson Building community having joined the collaborative co-located group at the Centre for Social Innovation (Suite 120) late last fall. Established in 1992 by Environment Canada, C2P2 has been providing programs and services that encourage actions to avoid or minimize the creation of pollution and waste – pollution prevention (P2) – as well as actions that foster a healthier environment and a sustainable society.

The new office at 215 Spadina marks the continued growth of this instrumental organization, which also has an office in Sarnia. Executive Director Chris Wolnik and Projects Officer Kady Cowan will focus on and expand national projects by sharing knowledge, tools and innovative thinking with business, governments, academia, individuals and organizations in order to catalyze behavioural change leading to more sustainable practices.

C2P2 are busy preparing for their 10th Canadian Prevention Roundtable on June 14 - 15 in Halifax. The event brings together the strongest pool of Canadian pollution prevention expertise to discuss future directions. Watch our pages for information on upcoming events.

www.c2p2online.com

Eva's Spring Fantasy Auction

The Spring Fantasy Auction is the signature fundraising event for Eva's Initiatives (Suite 370). This year, guests gathered at the historic St. Lawrence Hall for the fabulous event, which included a delicious buffet dinner, musical entertainment by Eva's staff and clients, as well as a silent and live auction. The bidding was a little heated at times, but everyone left happy and with some fantastic items in hand.

Eva's provides shelter, harm reduction services, counseling, and employ- ment and training programs for youth from ages sixteen to twenty-four. The organization, which is twelve years old, has been holding the Spring Fantasy Auction for eight years with tremendous success. This year's event raised over $42,000 enabling Eva's to continue providing valuable services in all three of their shelters. The event not only offers people the opportunity to contribute to a great cause, but creates a festive and fun environment where people meet and reconnect.

www.evasinitiatives.com

Green Corner: New Green Roof Pilot Program

The City of Toronto announced recently that it will be allocating $200,000 of the budget to implement a Green
Roof Incentive Pilot Program.  The overall goal of the pilot program is to encourage green roof installations
across the City and promote a number of highly visible projects already in place.

The City was influenced in part by a recent Ryerson University green roof cost-benefit study (using data from the City's Wet Weather Flow Master Plan (2001)). This study showed that if 8% of downtown Toronto's flat roofs were greened there could be a potential savings of one to two dollars per square metre from stormwater runoff reductions. This economic rationale, along with other environmental benefits, provided the basis for establishing the pilot program, which will provide eligible property owners with a grant of $10 per square metre for acceptable green roof projects, up to a maximum of $20,000.

The program will be open to all private property owners in the City of Toronto irrespective of building size and type as long as the building is capable of supporting a green roof that meets the program's requirements.

It is hoped that the Green Roof Incentive Pilot Program will result in the construction of a variety of green roof
types that could be used for education and promotional purposes. Ideally, the roofs in the pilot program will range from an expansive industrial/commercial green roof application down to a small single family residence. The pilot program will also support and showcase various green roof technologies and planting styles.

www.toronto.ca/greenroofs

 

Political Party

As members of Friends of Kathleen Wynne, Diane Oleskiw and Jennifer Scott hosted a fundraiser in support of the Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) on April 26. The event was held in the sunny offices of Scott + Oleskiw (Suite 235) with over sixty people sipping wine and catching up on Kathleen's activities.

Kathleen Wynne cares passionately about the issue of women's participation in government. As a long-time politician she has watched Canada's early success with electing women to parliament plummet and is very concerned that we now stand in forty second place globally. She "believes it's time to reverse this trend and to expand the dialogue about how to make real electoral change in our city, in our province, and in our country."

Scott + Oleskiw is a law firm that focuses on issues related to women and human rights. Diane Oleskiw practices feminist criminal law and Jennifer Scott practices human rights, constitutional and education law. Special guest Marie Bountrogianni, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and Democratic Renewal was also in attendance at the event to discuss the implications of electoral reform. Kathleen is now heading into preparations for re-election in 2007.

www.kathleenwynne.ca

Profile: Association for Women's Rights in Development

Like all really vital organizations the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID, Suite 250) is continuously working to revitalize itself not only to ensure it remains relevant well into the future, but also to support and encourage a new generation of women to become involved in feminist politics and human rights. AWID is continuously finding ways to re-energize issues and make the necessary organizational changes to reflect transformations in the landscape of women's rights.

AWID was founded in 1982 as a membership organization of women involved in international development who were concerned with the role of women in the development process. The World Conference on Women held in China in 1995 marked a turning point for groups engaged in transforming gender relations. As Executive Director Joanna Kerr explains, after the world conference the emphasis shifted to "trying to increase the rights of women through any type of process, not just international development." AWID took a look at itself, questioned how relevant it was, and realized it needed to make sure that it had a broad representation of women from the rest of the world as part of the organization.
 
In 2000 Joanna, then the President of the Board of Directors, was encouraged to step in as Executive Director. Joanna had been working hard to change the direction of the organization and saw this as an exciting opportunity to be even more influential. She had a few conditions: that the organization move to Canada, and that the name be
changed. So, the group moved up north and the Association for Women in Development became the Association for Women's Rights in Development. "This was the beginning of a radical transformation."

Joanna helped mould AWID into not simply a provider of information and services about women, development,
and human rights, but as a uniting organization that now brings together over six thousand individual members
and one hundred and fifty institutional members. An organization that once found its membership almost exclusively in the United States has managed to effectively internationalize its efforts now finding membership primarily in the global south. AWID's shift in outreach was aided in large part by a move of its headquarters from Washington DC to Canada.

Joanna explains: "I think Toronto is a much better environment to do this kind of work - it is a perfect place to run an international organization because of the labour force. The diversity that we are able to hire in this space you
certainly couldn't get in Washington DC. It's a young city and it's just been a really positive and hospitable environment for us to do our work."

In order to transform itself into a strongly focused international organization, AWID has a low profile in Canada. They have an international board, which excludes them from charitable status (fifty-one per cent of the board would
need to be Canadian in order for them to be eligible). "We didn't want to have a huge Canadian membership. We
wanted to be able to really listen and respond to the needs of our members in the rest of the world."

One of AWID's key projects is the International Forum on Women's Rights and Development that effectively brings
together close to two thousand people from 120 countries to discuss and debate the key issues facing women's
rights. It is hard to achieve consensus on complex issues like sex work and trafficking, or HIV/AIDS, but the forum
makes sure that the discussion in open and on-going.

"We're developing more holistic work around HIV/AIDS, so for the past several years we've been doing a lot of work
with young women activists in Africa. For us, we can't look at HIV/AIDS without looking at it as a women's rights issue. Women's vulnerability has increased, as has the rate of women with HIV/AIDS, so we see prevention in terms of women's empowerment and young women's rights activism. We've been holding leadership institutes over the past couple of years in five countries in Africa and held a regional one in Asia."

AWID is already gearing up for the next International Forum, likely to be held in the Middle East in 2008, and continues to explore new avenues. They plan to open a couple of new offices in countries where they have a large
membership base. Joanna says, "even though we work quite effectively virtually, we have ten websites and put
out six or seven e-lists a week, we're trying to reach our tentacles around - to be a truly international organization."

www.awid.org