Thursday, October 20, 2010
Board of Directors Meeting
Room 310
ACWI, 181 Higgins Avenue
Winnipeg, MB

Good day! My report for October/10

Tripartite
The next Tripartite meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, December 7/10. This meeting will be hosted by the Office of the Federal Interlocutor in Ottawa. Wayne and Marileen will attend this meeting with me.

Urban Conference – Thursday, October 28/10, Aboriginal Centre
The agenda for this event is in your board kits. To date we have 60 persons registered to attend. With one week to go, we are confident that we should achieve the 100 participant attendance target that we had established early on. The conference will be a first big step in terms of the measures we will take over the coming months and years to grow the membership and commitment by members to this organization. I am also working with our funders to upgrade the Youth Intern position to become a full time Communications/Community Liaison position for the Council. Jeff Betker, OFI representative has already agreed to permit ACW to allocate some of the dollars in the Professional Fees budget line to achieve this goal. It is absolutely essential that ACW will develop and steadily enhance our capacity to get our there in the community to establish a real connection with members and organizations and to share what we are doing for community. We must also ensure that our website is kept up to date and that we develop our capacity to use social media i.e. You Tube, Twitter etc. To achieve this goal, I will be meeting with Wayne and Jordan Molero (Aboriginal media expert) to put together an ACW Social Media Implementation Plan. I also want to have Jordan show his social media clip at the next board meeting so that you will see an example of the type of message this tool can deliver, especially to our youth.

ACW Youth Committee and ACW Youth Action Plan
Michelle has done a tremendous job in terms of establishing this exciting new group. The Path they have produced is on the wall here tonight. Michelle will speak to this document and provide a verbal update of their activities to date.

Economic Development
The Social Enterprise proposal that was submitted to the Office of the Federal Interlocutor has now been send to Aboriginal and Northern Affairs as they are interested in co-funding this initiative. They are assessing the proposal and we are awaiting their decision in this matter.

ACW-MMF Memorandum of Cooperation
Al Benoit and I will be meeting next week to review the draft document. It should be ready for presentation to the Board at our next meeting.

City of Winnipeg
I am meeting with James Allum and Rhonda Forgues to discuss proposed changes to the role of the Youth Intern. This is in line with the City's expectation that ACW would create a sustainable position within our organization in the longer term. They are prepared to continue subsidizing this role in order to buy ACW some time to identify permanent funding source(s).

Inner City Soccer Coalition
The Coalition is meeting with the University of Winnipeg on November 9/10 to determine how we can work together. As some of you may be aware, Mayor Katz committed approximately 2 million dollars to the University for new sport and recreation amenities including an indoor soccer pitch. The Coalition is also exploring other options to ensure that we can make soccer and other programming available to inner city children.

Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act
Wayne, Rhonda and I met with Shelly Glover, MP, St. Boniface and the new Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs and the Federal Interlocutor for 2 hours recently. Much of this time was spend discussing various Aboriginal issues. Shelly has since visited the Centre for a tour and another short meeting to discuss the above legislation package. She has asked the Council to publicly support this amendment to the Indian Act. I will speak to this issue.

Community Networking
I continue my efforts to get the face of ACW more visible in the community. I spent 2 hours carrying a sign at the Legislature on Tuesday, October 19/10 in support of the Red Tent initiative that is a national effort to pressure the federal government to adopt a national housing strategy. Bill 304, a private members bill will be up for passage in Parliament shortly. There were over 100 individuals from many different organizations and communities at this event.

Regina Visit
Michelle and I travelled to Regina last week. We had meetings with the Regina Police Service, Saskatchewan Justice (2 Directorates), City of Regina (Community Services) and the North Central Community Association. (host org for the Regina Anti-Gang Services program) The purpose of this meeting was to gather information about various anti gang type initiatives in Regina and the Province. If you recall, we made a commitment after the demise of the Papiiwak program to explore other optional programming models for Winnipeg.

Michelle and I are now preparing a report on our findings. I am also engaging Natalie Ballentyne to meet with several key Aboriginal youth serving agencies in Winnipeg to determine what anti-gang type programming is being delivered in this City. She is also going to ascertain their interest in co-sponsoring a one day community forum on these issues. I will be presenting this proposal to the governments at our Tripartite meeting in Ottawa. I also met with Cora Morgan, Executive Director of Onashowewin restorative Justice program this week and there are a number of issues relative to the justice system and Aboriginal Peoples that need to be addressed by community and leaders.