2017 marks the 10th anniversary of the Surrey Homelessness and Housing Society (SHHS). Over the past ten years the Society has provided over $3.5 million in funding to Surrey organizations that assist people experiencing homelessness. The Society has supported 55 projects with more than 50 partners assisting over 500 individuals, including children, who were homelessness or at imminent risk of homelessness.

The BSC Fund aims to bring more philanthropic resources to Black communities and believes that post-secondary education and training can be a valuable tool to combat poverty. The BSC Fund provides grants to Black students of all ages who face barriers to attending public post-secondary institutions.

Ken Lyotier was a champion of the people in the Downtown Eastside, where he lived and worked since the 1970s. He was a tireless innovator and advocate for those living in poverty and for “binners,” people who earn money by collecting and returning recyclables.

Often organizations that approach Vancity Community Foundation for support are managing multiple competing priorities. Through enterprise capacity reviews, Vancity Community Foundation assists organizations with assessing their key strengths and challenges in the areas of product/service, marketing, management, and governance, infrastructure and systems, operations and human resources, and financial systems.

Open each winter season, Aunt Leah’s lots sell high-quality Christmas trees and accessories, including stands, wreaths, swags and greenery, across Metro Vancouver. The lots are run by a combination of employees and volunteers and also provides training and employment opportunities to at-risk youth.

When Margaret Mitchell passed away on International Women’s Day in 2017 at the age of 92, she left a legacy of advocating for the rights of women and greater economic and social justice for all. Her Fund continues to support programs and initiatives that promote economic and social justice for women in East Vancouver.

Vancity Community Foundation supported ShredMasters to participate in a custom marketing workshop to build internal marketing capacity while completing a marketing plan. CSE also received support to hire a sales person to grow the client base for both ShredMasters and ValleyRecycling, a commercial and residential supportive employment recycling social enterprise the organization also operates.

The work of Mom2Mom (M2M) Child Poverty Initiative Society is based on research in child development and neuroscience, which has shown that enriching children’s environments by lowering levels of family stress, and connecting mothers to their child’s school and to community, leads to positive changes in children’s learning and development. When these things are in place, children are happier, better...

As part of VCF’s commitment to strengthening social enterprise, and in order to help vendors with their sales our social enterprise developer worked with Megaphone to develop a workshop that would give vendors some tools to better understand where their customers are coming from.