In a historic investment, the Slaight Family Foundation has pledged $30 million to support 11 national and regional disability organizations, led by Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation and Rick Hansen Foundation, co-creators of the initiative.
About eight million people in Canada, including 850,000 children, have one or more disabilities—a number that has doubled over the past 10 years. “As our population ages, these numbers will continue to increase,” says Sandra Hawken, president and CEO, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation. “This is really an investment in Canada as a whole by prioritizing the one in four Canadians who are traditionally overlooked.”
The Slaight Family Foundation has a long history of strategic philanthropic grants to multiple organizations, but this is the first time the foundation has applied its approach to disability.
“Our giving is unique in that we identify current issues that need addressing and focus on a sector or key area where we can support several groups at the same time to try to move the yardsticks with a collective approach,” says Gary Slaight, president and CEO of the Slaight Family Foundation.
“This accomplishes a few things: it makes the key players more aware of one another and what each other is doing in a particular area, and it creates new partnerships and helps find collaborative solutions,” he adds. “Many groups tell us that until we brought them together, they never connected with some of the groups. We also hope this will raise awareness with the general public and help leverage support from other donors.”
Over the next five years, the Slaight Family Foundation will donate $10.5 million to Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation, $10 million to the Rick Hansen Foundation, $1.5 million to Easter Seals Canada, and $1 million each to Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work (CCRW), Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB), Canadian Women’s Foundation, Empowered Kids Ontario, Inclusion Canada, March of Dimes Canada, Ontario Disability Employment Network (ODEN), and Wavefront Centre for Communication Accessibility.
The priorities
The Slaight Family Foundation, Rick Hansen Foundation and Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation worked together to determine priorities based on the top issues facing people with disabilities. “Both Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation and Rick Hansen Foundation partner with the populations we serve to include their voices in identifying priority needs,” explains Hawken, “so the Slaight Family Foundation could feel confident their philanthropy would have the biggest impact across the lifespan and across the country.”
The funding will support initiatives in four key areas: removing barriers (both physical and attitudinal); increasing access to pediatric disability healthcare programs and services; educating the next generation of disability inclusion champions, and scaling evidence-based assistive technologies and innovation.
Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation and the Rick Hansen Foundation identified the nine other grantees that could best support the Slaight foundation’s philanthropic vision. “It was important that each institution had a strong track record of impact for people with disabilities, that they were regional or national in focus, that there was an openness to collaboration, and that they fit with one of the four strategic priorities,” says Hawken.
It’s the first time these specific 11 organizations have been brought together, and several of the beneficiaries intend to expand partnerships that already exist within the group. The plan is to have all grantees, as well as people with lived experience of disability, meet a couple of times a year to talk about emerging issues and look for areas of partnership that currently don’t exist but could, and to amplify the public engagement campaigns and advocacy efforts of one another’s organization.
For example, in addition to directing some of the grant to expand its training program to increase the number of pediatric disability experts across Canada (there are currently only 146 developmental pediatricians today, many of whom are set to retire in the next five years), Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation will partner with March of Dimes Canada to expand some of its proven clinical programs, which are now only available at the hospital, to local communities across the country. It will also partner with Empower Kids Ontario to extend its world-leading brain-computer interface clinic and the technology to 20 locations across the province.
Both the ODEN and CCRW will expand their programs to support employers to create employment pathways for both youth and adults with disabilities, and the CNIB will develop training for the transportation, health and education sectors to make sure people with visual disabilities have access to meaningful employment.
Other key initiatives will focus on increasing the number of accessible buildings, schools and infrastructure in Canada, as well as access to care, housing and equipment for disadvantaged populations, building awareness across the country, and educating the next generation of disability champions.
The impact
“Philanthropists typically don’t think of disability as the place where they are going to make the big, big gifts,” says Hawken. “Our hope is that this will inspire others to think strategically about how to make an impact on this huge percentage of our population so that more kids and adults with disabilities can meaningfully be included in the community and have access to the care, programs, technology and employment they need and deserve. Canada is going to have a healthier, stronger economy when people with disabilities can fully participate.”
“We hope those living with a disability in Canada will have better supports, more buildings will be accessible, new programs and models will be developed that can be replicated across the country,” adds Slaight, “and that we raise awareness amongst the general public about those with disabilities to create a more inclusive society.”
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