Series - Participatory Grantmaking

“I felt the power, I felt the fire”: Empowering newcomers to the Peel Region through participatory grantmaking

Author Neha Chollangi
How newcomers from the Peel Region are tackling the systemic challenges they face by engaging in an open dialogue with each other

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.

var TRINITY_TTS_WP_CONFIG = {"cleanText":"\u201cI felt the power, I felt the fire\u201d: Empowering newcomers to the Peel Region through participatory grantmaking. This story is in partnership with World Education Services (WES) Mariam Assefa Fund.\u00a0 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 \u2014 which was half the minimum wage in 2018.\u00a0 There were other students also working in the pizza joint for the same wage. And though Johal recalls that it wasn\u2019t a bad environment, it wasn\u2019t great. The amount of work expected for the compensation was almost absurd. She stayed for two days before quitting.\u00a0 But withou

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