Dress for Success Canada Foundation

Purpose

This 36-month project will build the organizational capacity of Dress for Success so that it will be in a better position to provide guidance to underserved and vulnerable women who are trying to navigate the wide variety of COVID-19-related economic supports and services. This project will allow the organization to develop and provide online workshops to help inform women about the various programs that are available to support them, and to guide women through the application process to access available resources, referrals to nearby food banks, women’s shelters and other supports and one-on-one peer support The supplemental funding will be used for the development of training videos for career and peer support of volunteers, as well as for training sessions for Dress for Success Affiliates on how to recognize gender-based violence in their work. The funding will also be used for the design of a scalable, sustainable, automated impact measurement process that will provide local/national data to support the increasing need and effectiveness of virtual services in relationship to client outcomes. The project will develop a data-driven national best practices in virtual program delivery resource for affiliates and other community organizations across Canada. The supplemental funds will help to combat isolation and to get women connected to community programs for additional social, economic and health supports. This project will assist women impacted by massive job losses right across the country, as well as uniquely gendered challenges to navigating employment and finding employment during the pandemic.