The Robertson Building

A Commitment to Training and Employment for Women's (ACTEW, Suite 350) name says a lot about what they do. In simple terms, they are an umbrella organization that does research and analysis on training and employment for women in Ontario, and share this information with a large membership of service organizations and individuals. Not so simple a task that certainly requires commitment. The organization, which was founded in 1987, has grown and evolved over the years and just this month, has finally been granted charitable status. They have not only fought for equal employment issues and newcomer rights, but as an explicitly feminist organization they have struggled for funding support to enable them to offer services to a constantly evolving population of women. There have certainly been challenges along the way, but ACTEW has accomplished a great deal and are now starting some new projects made possible through new funding opportunities.

There are significant challenges to operating a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in the funding structure and policy dynamic that exists in Canada. However, Executive Director Jen Liptrot is reassured by the fact that "there's been a lot of momentum around reforming the Charities Act due to the civil society's movement and more attention to social justice issues in general. There's been more recognition that there's a very legitimate and worthwhile role that NGOs can play in building dialogue around civic engagement and equity issues. The way that most government services in Canada are delivered is through the voluntary sector - in every province NGOs are
delivering services on behalf of the government. So it makes sense that the government would want to become open and demonstrate that they're willing to hear from the service delivery groups around the impacts vis-a-vis policy mechanisms or funding. That whole feedback loop mentality is starting to kick in."

ACTEW began as "an informal network of career practitioners that were working with women in the community such as literacy instructors, employment counsellors, job developers; and they were seeing that women had different employment related needs from men. A lot of women may have been out of the workforce for a couple of years raising families and they were having challenges reintegrating, or transitioning back."

So, an informal group of women began meeting and creating a network to share best practices. From there, the
organization has steadily increased its scope and membership base through a series of research driven initiatives.

Like some of our other tenants who have already been profiled in these pages, ACTEW came to the Robertson Building from 401 Richmond Street West when their needs outgrew their space. They now share a much larger space on the third floor with friends and organizational collaborators, the Toronto Training Board. The growth of the organization is reflected in their new space, a staff that now includes Deanna Yerichuk, Hong
Zhu and Carol van den Kerkhof, and the exciting multi-year projects they are embarking upon. One of which, is a research grant to assess the impacts of the new Canada-Ontario Labour Market Development Agreement (LMDA).

The LMDA devolves responsibility for employment and training from the federal government to the provincial
level. Jen explains, "we're at a really exciting time, because of this agreement and we've been given a three-year grant from Status of Women to do an equity analysis on the whole piece - how the LMDA gets rolled out and
implemented and what it actually means for front-line service access for different kinds of clients and groups of
women." Ontario has been the last province to adopt the LMDA and ACTEW's involvement will mean it will be
the only one to benefit from a gender and equity analysis as it is implemented.

As one of the first umbrella organizations in Toronto with a large website dedicated to information exchange,
ACTEW has had valuable experience working in online environments. As "information brokers" their virtual
presence has been a necessary tool for providing important information to as many people as possible using the web as a portal. It has also gained them access to communities where otherwise they would not have the opportunity for interaction. "At least twice a year, we'll open the mail and find a membership application form from an agency we've NEVER heard of, or we've heard about them, but we haven't had contact with them. We haven't done any outreach or networking. They simply find our website, monitor what we're doing electronically, and then they'll join - we'll be completely delighted."

The success of their online environment has also gained them a grant from the Trillium Foundation to do more technical development on their website and expand its scope to include the "constellation" project. The project is a group of agencies in the employment and training sector producing online content which, will now have the opportunity to connect, update, and provide feedback on the information that is generated.

To find out more about ACTEW or become a member check out their website at www.actew.org.