Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Three Cortes Island projects are about to receive a $40,000 grant to advance gender equality. This is part of a $3.4 million collaboration between the Community Foundations of Canada and the Equity Fund supported by the Government of Canada.

Manda Aufochs Gillespie, Executive Director of the  Cortes Island Community Foundation, explained, “We were able to partially fund three different projects. Those include our Women's Centre, which everybody knows, runs with very little funding and a real bootstrap mentality, like ‘we're gonna get her done. So it's going to be a little bit of funding for supporting their work. The other really exciting project that I hope is gonna make a major difference in many families' lives is the Playschool expansion, so that there'll actually be almost full-time childcare available on Cortes for the first time ever. The third one is basically an intergenerational helping hands, um, project being put forward by the Family Support Services of the CCHA (Cortes Community Health Association).”

“This was our first time participating in one of these community foundations of Canada Federal Government projects. We have already made our recommendations. The recommendations have been accepted, and these different organizations are just now getting their announcements that they're accepted. They will sign a contract with the Community Foundations of Canada and the gender equity pilot program, and then their money is not released until 2023.”