Social

Community Goal

Provide care and support for community members

Reduce the number of members dependent on receiving income assistance

Income Assistance

Formerly known as the AANDC National Child Benefit Reinvestment (NCBR) Program

The IA – SAET program provides community-based support programming and Home to to Work training and adult upgrading opportunities for low-income families. AANDC’s IA – SAET is the on-reserve counterpart to reinvestment projects and programming. There are three activity areas for the BRFN IA – SAET on-reserve: support for parents; home-to-work training to employment projects; and cultural enrichment. The expected outcomes include a reduction in the effect of child poverty and decreased barriers for parents/guardians to become or remain attached to the workforce.

The intent and overall purpose of the Income Assistance – Social Assistance Employment and Training initiative is to assist low-income families on-reserve in transitioning from Income Assistance to paid employment while addressing the root causes of child poverty.

Additionally, this initiative seeks to reduce the Income Assistance dependency of families with children and single parent families. Targeted investments through the various activity areas of IA – SAET will support the advancement of low-income families to contributing members of the labour market.

Community Based Support

Big River First Nation is committed to provide supports to the low income families in the BRFN community through the IA – SAET Community Based Support program. This program provides the supports for culture and language retention to keep traditional values and the Cree culture ways of life alive.

Various workshops are held year round for families and youth to be able to practice Cree values of; oral history, oral storytelling, land based life skills, as well as culture camps for youth in schools, community cultural ceremonies, etc. Other areas of Community Based supports include providing workshops for parents, teen parents, and youth.