OAC Indigenous Women’s Safety Table Consulting
- Ottawa Aboriginal Coalition (OAC)
- 1155 Lola St suite 100, Ottawa, ON K1K 3R1, Canada
- $40.00 hourly
Job Description
The Ottawa Aboriginal Coalition is made up of Executive Directors from the Ottawa Indigenous service organizations in Ottawa. The Coalition meets monthly throughout the year to identify emerging issues and joint priorities based on their work in the community and provincial and national issues impacting urban Indigenous people. The Coalition works within a Relationship Framework that identifies the key relationships that are built and maintained to ensure that the needs of urban Indigenous people are addressed in Ottawa. The Coalition is engaged with the broader Ottawa Indigenous community, Elders and non-Indigenous partners to build a strong Ottawa which is a place of belonging for all Indigenous people.
The OAC Indigenous Women’s Safety Table
The Indigenous Women’s Safety Table (IWST) was developed to respond to the Calls for Justice out of the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and to apply them to the Ottawa community. The table has focused on specific systems that need to change in order to increase their capacity to be a safe place for Indigenous women. The current working groups are police, health care, residential services and housing and homelessness.
Summary of the Work
The consultant will be required to collect information for the table and organize it into clear and accessible formats. The work will then be presented to the Working Table for analysis and discussion.
Details of the Work
- Group Homes in Ottawa where Indigenous children and youth would be located.
- The institutional settings where Indigenous children and youth would be located, including for mental health, development supports
For all Individual Sites
- The number of youth/children they house at any given time.
- The age range that they take.
- What is the criteria for their group home/institution in accepting youth?
- The percentage of children/youth that are Indigenous each year.
- The gender breakdown
- The program
- Where are these children coming from (geographic location, specific First Nations, cities or hamlets from Inuit Nunagut).
- What services and programs are provided to the youth/children?
- What culturally specific services and programs are provided to them?
- What are the processes they use to ensure safety for the Indigenous youth?
- How do they ensure the youth is connected to their home community?
- How do they ensure the youth is connected to the Ottawa Indigenous community?
- What is their response to Indigenous youth being harmed (e.g. sexual assault, racial violence between residents, etc)
- What Indigenous service organizations are they connected to?
Formed in 2001 as a means of presenting a unified voice on behalf of the Aboriginal community. The Coalition is an alliance of Aboriginal delivery organizations that provide front-line programs and services to Aboriginal people living in the National Capital Region.
The OAC has ten Members and two Co-Chairs, Allison Fisher Executive Director of Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health and Mikki Adams, CAFM Executive Director of Inuuqatigiit Centre for Inuit Children, Youth and Families. Mary Daoust, Executive Director of Minwaashin Lodge- Indigenous Women's Support Centre is the Administrative Lead for the OAC. The OAC has a number of staff including: Project Coordinator, Project Support, Relationship Coordinator, Administrative Coordinator and Research Assistants.
The OAC advocates at the community, municipal, provincial and federal levels and seeks to educate and raise awareness on Aboriginal issues and the unique circumstances of Aboriginal people and their interests in Ottawa. Ultimately we seek to increase the positive and healthy choices available to Aboriginal community members and their families across a wide and diverse range of considerations, whether it is health or housing or education to employment and training or access to cultural activities.
The History of the Ottawa Aboriginal Coalition
The Coalition originally formed in 2001 as a means of presenting a unified voice with the City of Ottawa on behalf of the local Aboriginal community around the issue of homelessness. Between 2001 and 2005, with the leadership of Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health, the Coalition worked together on a number of other issues that affected the Aboriginal community in Ottawa including the Official City plan and the investments that United Way provided to Aboriginal community service organizations.
In 2005, it became an official coalition of Aboriginal services organizations that provided front-line programs and services to Aboriginal people living in the National Capital Region (NRC). The original members of the Coalition were: Wabano Health Centre for Aboriginal Health, Gignul Housing, Odawa Friendship Centre, Minwaashin Lodge, Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre, Tungasuvvingat Inuit and a Métis Community Representative.