Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, Mr. Speaker, I talked about volunteerism, and my questions will be for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. During the 2016 nomination period, how many people and organizations were nominated for the awards that the department issued? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you. Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, through the 2016 nomination period, actually 23 nominations in total were received for the four awards: 10 were from elders; 11 were individuals; one group applicant; and one youth. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I must apologize to the Minister. I am going to probably ask a question that is a little bit outside the box here. So we have 23 nominations, which is good, but it is really sad for this territory, where we have a lot of volunteers out there. Can the Minister advise what the department is going to do to increase the nominations besides up to 23 so we can have more people recognized?
This topic of increasing volunteerism is not new to the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs. We have been realizing that the numbers of volunteers have been going down over the years. There may be a variety of reasons for that, including the need for twoparent families to be working now.
We are actually doing a number of things. We are looking at increasing our advertising to get more nominations out there. We are also going to be putting it forward to the stakeholders, the five regional stakeholders that we will be meeting with, because I am guessing that they are also realizing that their volunteer base is shrinking, as well. So we will be putting it forward to them when we look at how we look at a strategic regional policy and seeing if we can come up with ideas to support throughout the Northwest Territories to increase our volunteerism.
I thank the Minister for her answer. That is a good step, a good start. However, I think we have lots and lots and lots of volunteers. I know that. I can see there are people out there volunteering. I don't think it is the income thing; I just think the recognition is the problem. Is the department looking at ways to help communities recognize their hardworking volunteers as the first step towards the territorial award?
So although I recognize that volunteers are really critical, really important, very valuable in our communities, they often don't do that for recognition. However, it is important to recognize our volunteers, and so we do a number of things to promote volunteerism.
We have a Volunteer Organization Development Contribution program that gives training support funding. We have a Volunteer Recognition Program, that we have $30,000 that we provide funding for community governments to run volunteer recognition events. They can apply up to $1,000 per event. That program is still taking applications, so I would like that to get out there, as well as the Volunteer Organization Development Corporation program for training. We also are continuing to take applications for that.
We support agencies, the NGO Stabilization Fund that gives to non-profit organizations that are mostly led by volunteers. We provide them with funding. We have the NWT Outstanding Volunteer Awards where we annually recognize volunteer achievements, that we are talking about, in four categories, youth, individual, elders, and groups. We have the NWT Youth Ambassador program, where we give youth opportunities to travel and experience volunteerism and get recognized for that. Of course, we have the Fire Service Merit Awards where we promote our volunteers within our emergency services.
So we do quite a bit. We offer some training. We can always do better, but we are looking at ways, and we are hoping that we will be able to expand on that.
Thank you, Minister. Member for Nahendeh, final question.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Minister for her answer. I am very familiar with those programs and that, so she did a great job. Still, I think we need to get that money out to the communities. It shouldn't be applicationbased. It should be given out every year. It should be done so the communities can recognize their volunteers.
Now, in regard to the importance of volunteers that the Minister has talked about, does the department have any courses or resources that they can offer to volunteer groups to become more efficient and effective volunteers out there? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have gone through on my last answer a number of areas where we promote volunteers and where we support organizations with doing that. Any organization that is interested in either accessing more volunteers or training their volunteers, we are willing to work with them individually, as well.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Sahtu.
