By Len Kruzenga

Wiinipeg-Stung by recent public criticism that it has killed an aboriginal women's training program; a board member of the Centre for Aboriginal Human Resource Development (CAHRD) says he's completely mystified by many of the complaints leveled at the organization by OWN staff and its board of directors.

"It was very hurtful to hear what they said, considering all we have done to support their organization and their efforts," said Wayne Helgason, CAHRD board vice-president and Aboriginal Council of Winnipeg president. "As far as we were concerned we were still working with OWN until we saw their press release.

"CAHRD approved $90.000 which is about nine seats with the understanding that the province was in on the other half. Well that's their training program."
But the dispute, says Helgason, is about more than simply the OWN training program.
"There are other things that OWN wants to do, which is very laudable and great but, they're not part of CAHRD's mandate."

Helgason says that while CAHRD was able to provide some funding in the past for other training supports such as OWN's radio program, that funding was limited to one year.
"Training doesn't go on forever. It's provided to get certain things up and running like start-up in a business."

That insistence by CAHRD for OWN to actively seek out additional funding support for its training program and core funding, was predicated by CAHRD's limited resources," according to Helgason.

"We get $3.6 million but, by comparison the MMF gets $15 million and the AMC gets $27 million. So we've really tried to encourage groups to apply to additional sources of funding.
"CAHRD receives a fixed and limited amount of funding and we have a responsibility to ensure that the benefits of those dollars are maximized."

Compounding OWN's difficulties is that its training program was considered very expensive in cost-benefit terms," according to Helgason.

"The program costs approximately $180,000 to deliver with an end result of perhaps six placements, which is $30,000 per placement.

"CAAHRD gets evaluated on the effectiveness of our funding allocations to other organizations. At $30,000, you could send people to Harvard for that."

And the mandate of CAHRD, added Helgason, is to provide funding for labour market program training and not core funding for organizations themselves.

"They did more than training and that's wonderful and while we can support their efforts philosophically we have a responsibility to ensure the funding dollars we receive and allocate are administered and directed to the types of things they're supposed to and in an effective, efficient and economical manner.

"Let's face it accountability is very important and we were ensuring that the future of the funding we receive from Aboriginal Human Resources and Development (AHRD) is not jeopardized."

Most disconcerting for CAHRD, it's commissioning group and the board of directors, says Helgason, is that OWN executive director Sandi Funk and her board did not use the appeal process.

"That's what's been surprising to me. They didn't even use the process. There wasn't a discussion on this but suddenly there was a press release.

"It's not unreasonable for us to ask a group to seek out other funding supports. Other groups such as Urban Circle and Talking Charge have done that. But Sandi didn't even apply to other organizations."