As participants in the Roots/Routes to Women’s Leadership and Empowerment project, we received funding from Status of Women Canada to engage in an exchange process with the Saint John Women’s Empowerment Network’s “Power Up” program in St. John, New Brunswick and the West Central Women’s Resource Centre in Winnipeg.  The purpose of this exchange process was to learn from the curricula used in each program, test and further develop our leadership/empowerment models, and develop best practices which can be shared with other organizations across the country.

We  held exchange visits in each of the three cites with the coordinators from each project as well as women who have graduated from the various programs. The goal of the exchange visits was to give program coordinators and graduates the opportunity to  experience first-hand the methodologies and the practices used in Toronto, Winnipeg and St. John, discuss the similarities and differences between our programs, and to document our existing practices and the impact of changes and innovations that are made after the initial exchange visits.  At the end of the project, best practices were documented and disseminated to women’s groups across the country. See Best Practices for resources and more information.