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To accomplish these outcomes, UAS projects will focus investments in three priority areas:
• improving life skills;
• promoting job training, skills and entrepreneurship; and
• supporting Aboriginal women, children and families.
Governance structure(s):
Steering committees are the catalysts for planning, making funding decisions and coordinating
work through the UAS — along with other community activities — to respond to urban Aboriginal issues. Each UAS steering committee comprises a cross-section of the Aboriginal community to ensure the steering committee’s decisions reflect broad community concerns and priorities. While
the steering committee structure is meant to reflect local circumstances, each steering committee includes representation from the local Aboriginal community, the federal government, other levels of government and the private sector. The inclusive nature of the steering committees is indicative of the principle of partnership that underlies the UAS, particularly in keeping with the objective to establish strong and active partnerships between government and community.
Regardless of whether funding is delivered by a community organization, federal officials or a combination of the two, funding through the UAS is designed to promote co-operation with other key partners (including other federal departments) and stakeholders in support of community interests.
Planning Highlights:
The UAS works in partnership with other federal departments, provincial and municipal governments, Aboriginal communities and the private sector to make strategic investments designed to enhance the economic and social participation of Aboriginal people in Canada’s urban centres. Community projects funded through the UAS focus on three priority areas:
• improving life skills;
• promoting job training, skills and entrepreneurship; and
• supporting Aboriginal women, children and families.
The UAS also invests in building capacity within the urban Aboriginal community through investments that help form effective partnerships and develop and implement strategic plans that address the unique needs of each community.
The UAS will work on achieving greater horizontality across federal departments to maximize investments. It will explore and implement new and innovative approaches to increase horizontality.
The UAS will also work toward its core objectives, including closing the socio-economic gaps between urban Aboriginal people and other city residents and helping urban Aboriginal people increase their participation in the economy. It will realize these goals by leveraging funding from other levels of government and the private sector and by better aligning federal initiatives with provincial-municipal initiatives and other activities to better support.
The UAS is an opportunity-driven strategy designed to leverage other federal, provincial, municipal and private funding for community-based projects rather than funding pre-planned projects. For these reasons, variances will exist between the planned spending and partnering, and actual spending and partnering when the UAS reports on its results at the end of 2014-2015.
Federal Partners: Canadian Heritage, Public Safety Canada, Employment and Social Development Canada, Public Health Agency of Canada, Department of Justice
Federal Partner: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada
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