Ontario Financial Empowerment Champions project

Ontario Financial Empowerment Champions project 2021-2022 Building on two previous projects from 2015-2021 –Financial Empowerment and Problem Solving and ON Financial Empowerment Champions - the Government of Ontario will provide one-year transitional funding to Prosper Canada to:

Continue service delivery in partnership with nine community organizations that service Ontarians living on low income in six municipal service areas through the 2021 tax season
Explore and promote viable models for integration of financial empowerment (FE) services into Ontario Works (OW) delivery, and
Support transition to locally sustained service delivery models.

The nine local partners include:

Agincourt Community Services Association, Toronto, ON
EBO Financial Education Centre, Ottawa, ON
Jane Finch Community and Family Centre, Toronto, ON
Sudbury Community Service Centre, Sudbury, ON
Thunder Bay Counselling Centre, Thunder Bay, ON
Salvation Army Centre of Hope, London, ON
The Working Centre, Kitchener, ON 
West Neighbourhood House, Toronto, ON
WoodGreen Community Services, Toronto, ON

Intended outcomes and benefits are:

24,000+ individuals access pandemic-safe virtual/hybrid tax-filing, benefit navigation, and financial counselling services.
Three municipal OW sites explore opportunities to integrate FE services into Ontario Works to advance life stabilization goals; 47 OW offices have access to new or enhanced municipal FE integration tools/resources and staff are directly engaged in broader FE integration and FE delivery capacity building activities.
16,000+ financially vulnerable individuals take independent action to build their financial health, through Trove, an online, self-directed financial toolkit.
National, provincial and local-level charitable funding organizations engage in sustainability models for a financial empowerment infrastructure in Ontario.

This project is funded by the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services