Mujer Sana - Comunidad Sana benefited from a generous research grant from the Ontario Women's Health Council.
The project could not have been implemented, though, without significant volunteer time and in-kind contributions
from partners and community supporters.
Financial support
One of the important goals of this project was to increase community capacity in three ways:
In-kind contributions
Partners' contributions
Each partner provided substantial in-kind contributions, especially in the form of human resources and expertise.
Without these, the project could not have been successfully completed. For example, every project partner put in more
working hours than originally budgeted for. LAZO members had many meetings in addition to those that were originally
scheduled meetings. All LAZO members worked many volunteer hours, donated office supplies, books and space, made and
received phone calls from their homes, and used their personal computers for the Mujer Sana/Comunidad Sana work.
LAZO 'madrinas' spent many volunteer days supporting the organization in its role as project partner; helping the
community leaders grow into their new roles as Lay Health Promoters/Participatory Researchers, renewing and developing
community contacts, and translating material from English to Spanish, and back again.
Centretown Community Health Centre contributed one to two days a week of a Health Promoter's time and approximately
one to two days a week from the Manager of Community Health Promotion. Gentium Consulting subsidized the project by
charging a lower per diem than their usual fee, contributing additional volunteer days, donating office supplies,
equipment, software, literature, training resources, and office space to the project. The Community Health Research Unit
donated additional staff time to the project, so that their representative could participate actively as a project
partner, and also permitted access to computers and software for special training sessions. Three CHRU research interns
participated at different times in the project without pay, assisting with the focus group analysis and data collection
for the case study
Community members' contributions
Those community and health service organizations on the Advisory Committee freed up staff time to allow participation
in AC meetings and involvement in the sub-committees. Other members of the Advisory Committee were there entirely as
volunteers (that is, they were not paid by any organization while attending meetings), e.g., CCHC Board members, the
Latin American Women's Congress representative, and the two physicians in private practice.
Hispanic churches and organizations permitted the use of space for workshops and events, without cost. Businesses
from Ottawa's Latin American community supported the project events generously. They donated food, door prizes,
publicity, and incentives to participate.
The Ontario Breast Screening Program was an important supporter of the project. They provided breast screening
information pamphlets in English and Spanish, offered access to their intake data, translated their intake forms into
Spanish, and had a videotape translated into Spanish for the use of the project.
