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Both Immigrant Services Calgary (ISC) and the YMCA of Southwestern Ontario (YWSO) are projects funded by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada working to leverage newcomer strengths and assets as they support their settlement into new communities in Alberta and Ontario.

Gateway

Gateway is a project aimed at positively transforming the experience of newcomers in Calgary by streamlining activities with an emphasis on data sharing, planning, welcoming packages and referrals to organizations. Gateway features a standardized client needs assessment, personalized planning, and referrals methodology that is used and shared across participating agencies. Gateway offers newcomers one landing place to connect them to a variety of services in their community that are right for them.

Working Together

As you can see just from their short conversation, both projects were quite similar and sought to ensure the standardization of a common needs and assets assessment that could support multiple newcomer serving organizations. Conversations between the two organizations began in May 2020 as they began to explore how the K2 Pathway to Settlement System could be adapted to support Gateway.

On this day, the WE Value team presented the K2 Pathway Settlement System to the Gateway Partner Advisory Council, comprised of ISC and 9 other organizations in Calgary, Alberta.

To learn more about the Gateway initiative, see the video below.