Assessing the Needs of Rural, Anglophone Women in Quebec : The RONA Project
Année :
2005
Auteur(e) :
Volume et numéro :
, 24 (4)
Revue :
, Canadian Woman Studies
Résumé
The purpose of this paper is to outline the attempts of a Québec Women's Centre, the Lennoxville and District Women's Centre (LDWC), to assess the needs of its rural constituency and provide services to women living in the remote parts of its regional mandate. The Regional Outreach Needs Assessment or RONA project developed a method for expanding the Centre's services to women who have traditionally been all but forgotten by the state. Through the RONA project, the Centre was able to ensure its permanent, grassroots involvement throughout the region. The success of the project is an example of rural and small town sustainability and women's activism to resist the conditions of isolation, poverty, abuse, and lack of available health and social services in their own communities and language. More importantly, the Centre's outreach illuminates, what Dominique Masson argues is, According to the Director of the LDWC, the Centre is well equipped to identify and respond to a wide variety of needs among a diverse population of English-speaking women. An experienced staff and board are dedicated to maintaining an extensive network of contacts among both English and French community groups serving the health and social service needs of the Estrie. The Centre also has a large repertoire of services available to women including a medley of workshops and educational activities, compassionate listening, and informational and referral services, monthly newsletter, advocacy concerning women's issues, action and support groups and services to victims of sexual assault. However, only women able to travel to the Lennoxville area were making use of these services and personnel. Previous attempts to entice women from outlying communities through carpooling, mass mailings and local advertising of events failed. Moreover, its core funding from the Régie régionale de la santé et des services sociaux de l'Estrie (today called Agence régionale de la santé et des services sociaux de l'Estrie) did not provide an additional subsidy of some $15,000 normally given to organizations with a regional mandate. This was because the LDWC was never able to show that English-speaking women in outlying areas needed its services. Both staff and board agreed that a community outreach strategy to better serve all women in its territory was needed. But without the financial resources and a team of staff and volunteers that was already overburdened, the task would not be easy. So in 2001 the Centre applied to, and received from, the Department of Canadian Heritage's Official Languages Support Program the sum of $40,000 to ascertain die needs of Anglophone women in the 05 Estrie region and establish a two-year pilot project to deliver services. The RONA project was thus born and if successful could be used to convince the Centre's core funding agency to finance all future outreach activities. The outreach work of the LDWC is an important example of rural women's activism. As a service provider and resource for information on women's lives, it is well positioned to understand and respond to a diversity of conditions and needs. The Centre is part of a grassroots network of women's service providers and acts in partnership with the Québec Ministry of Health and Social Services to ensure that rural women's rights as citizens are not forgotten. Although tensions still exist between the need for long term core funding versus state financial support on a limited, contract basis, the LDWC continues to empower women in their communities through its outreach program. Today, Centraide funds this program from year to year through its Community Building Project. However, the current liberal, provincial government has agreed to increase the level of core funding for all women's service groups and make the money recurring which should provide more stability for the groups. The biggest struggle for the future is to ensure that the present government upholds the social consensus model of partnering with community groups in the provision of public services to its citizens
Thème :
Accessibilité des servicesAnglophones au QuébecFemmesMilieu ruralSanté et mieux-êtreService social
Base de données : il s’agit d’une référence bibliographique. Veuillez noter que la majorité des références de notre base de données ne contient pas de textes intégraux.
- Pour consulter les références sur la santé des communautés de langue officielle en situation minoritaire (CLOSM) : cliquez ici