North York Community House Selected to Improve Settlement Services for Newcomers in North York

News release

January 23, 2019—North York, ON—Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) works with many partners in the delivery of services to newcomers to Canada, and supports their integration into Canadian communities. IRCC is actively working to improve these settlement services through the Service Delivery Improvements funding stream and will be providing funding of $400,424 to North York Community House (NYCH) to help deliver these important services.

Marco Mendicino, Member of Parliament for Eglinton—Lawrence, made the announcement on behalf of the Honourable Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.

This project will embed user-centered design and innovation methodologies, with help from social design firm InWithForward, and become part of the Grounded Space Collective. Grounded Space is a collection of social service agencies in Canada committed to making evidence and experimentation a core function of their organizations. NYCH will form a team of integrated researchers and cultural curators. Staff will be coached to do ethnographic field work with end-users, visualize trends, prototype new practice models, and develop new kinds of evaluation metrics and backend data systems for project execution.

IRCC’s Service Delivery Improvement Fund is a dedicated funding stream of over $30 million per year, devoted to service delivery improvement, innovation and experimentation to continue to find better ways to deliver services to newcomers, meet the needs of newcomer clients and support the integration process.

Quotes

“I’m proud that the Government of Canada is working with organizations like North York Community House to provide high-quality settlement services for newcomers across the country. Finding new and better ways to help newcomers succeed in their journey benefits all Canadians, by strengthening our labour force and the economy.”

– The Honourable Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship

“Thanks to the Service Delivery Improvement fund, projects such as this one undertaken by North York Community House will improve IRCC’s understanding of newcomer needs and support their successful integration into Canadian communities.”

– Marco Mendicino, Member of Parliament for Eglinton—Lawrence

Quick facts

  • SDI funding is a dedicated stream within the Settlement Program of almost $150 million over five years. The funding was allocated to the Department through the 2017 Immigration Levels Plan, and is devoted to testing new approaches to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the Program.

  • Following the first Expression of Interest process for SDI launched in fall 2017, IRCC is now funding over 100 projects across the country. All projects will be complete by March 31, 2021.

  • There are 7 funding streams under the SDI: language acquisition; employment; youth supports; harnessing volunteers and supporting capacity building in the settlement sector; pay for performance; newcomer well-being and programming to support vulnerable clients; and research and analysis to drive innovation and understand the user experience.

Contacts

Contacts for media only

Mathieu Genest
Minister’s Office
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada 
613-954-1064

Media Relations
Communications Branch
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada 
613-952-1650
IRCC.COMMMediaRelations-RelationsmediasCOMM.IRCC@cic.gc.ca

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