OAWC: History




		During the late 1980’s, women’s centres from across Ontario organized a campaign to lobby the Provincial government for core funding, and subsequently established the Association. Much of the joint work has focused on obtaining or maintaining funding for Ontario women’s centres. Other projects included brochures, development of a website and a resource guide. OAWC established an association steering committee and a membership structure, including fees to generate funds to hold meetings and operate the website. Responsibility for holding funds, hosting the website and various project grants has been shared among various centres over the years. However, as the Association became less and less active, membership decreased. The first provincial meeting of women’s centres was held outside of Thunder Bay, Ontario in 1986. The subsequent lobby effort was successful, and by 1991, the then NDP government allotted annualized funding of $50,000 each to 20 centres in the province, via Ontario Women’s Directorate. After undergoing cuts, increases and many other changes over the years, this funding program evolved into the current OWD Investing in Women’s Futures program. The IWF program differs from the original stabilization funding, with an expanded budget that now funds a different and more specific set of programs and services (ie, not centres), through a broader array of agencies. Over the years and various governments, some women’s centres lost this funding, while others had it withdrawn temporarily and then re-instated. As a result, not all agencies who receive the IWF grant consider themselves a women’s centre, and there are others who identify as women’s centres who do not receive this funding. Campus based women’s centres have never been adequately included. This situation is significant, because in recent years, our mutual contact as an Association has been mediated through meetings coordinated by OWD, usually with only with those agencies who receive the IWF funding in attendance. The last formal meeting of OAWC was held in 1999. What constitutes a Women’s Centre? The original definition developed by OAWC to describe Women’s Centres was inclusive of the diverse mandates of Ontario’s women’s centres in the late 1980s. OWD adopted a simplified version for funding purposes: a multiservice, community based agency, run by and for women. The original definition included the grass roots and equality seeking nature of many Centres, and their goal of empowering women. The original surveys of Women’s Centres in Ontario showed an incredibly varied set of organizations, some with broad, others with more specific mandates, offering a wide variety of services. A resource guide published in the mid 1990s, entitled “Women’s Centres – The Bridge Builders” cited the shared goal among the province’s centres: “To support, enrich and empower the lives of women in Ontario.” It is likely time to re-visit these defining factors.
	Please contact your local women's centre for more information