“I felt the power, I felt the fire”: Empowering newcomers to the Peel Region through participatory grantmaking
Why It Matters
Many funders are interested in moving away from the traditional grantmaking models — which have been criticized as rigid, opaque and disconnected from lived experience. Community organizations say there’s value in building a flexible system — one that can change and transform based on what a community needs at any given moment.
This story is in partnership with World Education Services (WES) Mariam Assefa Fund.
Shortly after immigrating to Canada from India, Puneet Kaur Johal was in search of a part-time job. To her misfortune, she was only able to find work at a pizza joint where the employer was paying $7/hour — which was half the minimum wage in 2018.
There were other students also working in the pizza joint for the same wage. And though Johal recalls that it wasn’t a bad environment, it wasn’t great. The amount of work expected for the compensation was almost absurd. She stayed for two days before quitting.
But without finding other work immediately after, Johal was unemployed for four months. And living in Brampton, one of the top ten most expensive places to live in the country, international students need a part-time job. Luckily, Johal got a job as a tutor at
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