Truth and Reconciliation: Advancing our commitments

Today, Canada marks its fourth annual National Day of Truth and Reconciliation.

This day  commemorates the survivors and children lost to Canada’s residential school system and invites us to reflect on the many forms of systemic, institutional and personal discrimination that still affect the lives of all Indigenous people in Canada.

Reflection alone is not enough, but it is the first step that leads us to ask questions, pursue truth and understanding, and take action to heal the hurts of the past and move us forward on a better path together.

With this understanding, in June 2023  Prosper Canada made a public Commitment to Reconciliation. This was not the first step in our reconciliation journey, but it was a critical turning point because it invited us to be publicly accountable for specific commitments we were making to Indigenous people, organizations and communities.

To this end, we would like to share the actions we have taken over the past year to advance our commitments, recognizing that these are early steps and we have still much more work ahead of us.

Because healing and reconciliation begin with truth and understanding, we began by pursuing organization-wide Indigenous Cultural Competency Training offered by the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres in November 2023 and February 2024. These sessions helped to build a common understanding across our team of the historical process of colonization in Canada, its impact on Indigenous Peoples, the many ways in which colonization and its legacies are still present today, and action Indigenous Peoples and their allies are taking to combat this.

In parallel, we also established an internal Reconciliation Working Group to develop a 3-year workplan to advance our reconciliation commitments, monitor and report annually on our progress, discuss resulting insights and learning, and share tools, resources and learning opportunities internally and with our national network.

The Working Group has completed a first draft of our 3-year workplan. In addition, a range of staff have curated and shared a rich array of learning resources with our team and network. We are also using research and evaluation opportunities to generate insights to improve how we collaborate with Indigenous communities and partners and are sharing these insights with our network to inform their work. Our recent Building Financial Wellness in First Nations Project report is an example of the insights we are generating and sharing (full report and summary).

From October 2023 to February 2024, we also worked with an Indigenous consulting firm to develop a comprehensive process for ensuring that the learning materials we develop are inclusive of Indigenous audiences. Their report also provided in-depth recommendations for improving our current money management booklet series that we will be implementing beginning in April 2025. Our Learning and Training Team continues to access Indigenous expert support as they implement all of these recommendations.

To ensure that the national financial empowerment network we animate and the supports we provide are more welcoming and inclusive of Indigenous organizations, we have designated Indigenous Peoples as a Priority Population for Prosper Canada and are dedicating resources and effort to building deeper, more sustained, and trustworthy relationships with Indigenous partner organizations that are fully aligned with Indigenous financial wellness priorities and needs. 

This includes designating Indigenous Peoples as a priority group for significant new federal funding committed to Prosper Canada to enable us to expand community financial help services across Canada.

In partnership with IG Wealth Management and with advisory support from national Indigenous organization AFOA Canada, we continue to facilitate the expansion of partnerships between interested First Nation communities and leading non-Indigenous Financial Empowerment Champion (FEC) organizations (SEED and Community Financial Counselling Services in Manitoba and Sudbury Community Service Centre in Ontario). In Phase 2 of our Building Financial Wellness in First Nations Project, these organizations and 23 First Nation communities co-developed and delivered culturally appropriate financial wellness services to 3,043 community members in the first 6 months and boosted their incomes by an estimated $11.4 million. The goal is to expand this work to 35 First Nation communities over 2 years.

To build understanding and alignment on how to do this work well, Prosper Canada facilitated four Community of Practice events over the past year with participating FEC and First Nation partners to discuss needs and challenges and explore more and better ways to serve First Nation community members. These conversations resulted in innovative new approaches to helping individuals access ID and tax file year round.

We have also begun more systematic outreach to other interested regional and national Indigenous organizations to build new relationships and better understand diverse Indigenous financial wellness priorities and needs across the country.

We look forward to continuing our journey and are appreciative and grateful for the knowledge, wisdom, patience, frankness, and generosity of Indigenous partner organizations, project participants, consultants, trainers and volunteers who are helping us to grow our knowledge and understanding, build new and better relationships, and be more effective in supporting Indigenous communities in their pursuit of financial wellness.  They deserve nothing less.