SASKATOON – Betty Payne and Kay Williams are taking the federal budget cuts personally.
That’s because the government’s elimination of funding for 90 development education organizations across Canada has likely cost them their jobs.
Through the Rural Interchurch Development Education Program Co-operative (RICDEP) the two women help rural Saskatchewan people learn about issues of world economies, peace, human rights and the environment. For the past decade Payne and Williams have compiled resources and shipped them to groups but also facilitated meetings and trained volunteers to carry on the task of spreading information about developing countries.
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The $75,000 they’ve lost from the federal government represents about 75 percent of their annual budget. This year they raised $23,000 on their own, mainly through $5 and $10 donations from individuals. Outside of the government, their single biggest donations were $1,000 from Saskatchewan Wheat Pool and $400 from various churches.
Individuals should pay
The two women are bitter about what they see as government short-sightedness and a political agenda. Payne said the government said it cut this type of work in Canada because it was ineffective and that interested individuals should be paying all costs for groups like RICDEP.
Payne said: “It’s a move to silence the voices questioning their foreign aid budget cuts.
“The real reason is that we are more vulnerable because the public is more supportive of ‘charity’ work. Our work is more disturbing.”
RICDEP has a 12-person board of people throughout the province, with 325 people who pay a membership fee and another 400 supporters who get the co-op’s newsletter. Payne and Williams say they have contacts in 250 small communities in Saskatchewan and are the only ones talking with those isolated people about world development issues.
RICDEP’s board will be meeting shortly to discuss what should happen, but winding down the co-op looms high on the list. Funding possibilities include:
- Approaching individuals, which would consume time previously spent on programs and is difficult in a geographic sense.
- Approaching churches, which have to be apolitical and whose parishioners tend to prefer a charity model where they can give money and not hear the politics.
- The co-operative movement – Sask Pool, Credit Union Central and the Canadian Co-operative Association will all be approached.
- Approach farm organizations.
- The provincial government.
Williams is also frustrated that the federal cuts came without warning and don’t seem to recognize their expertise and dedication as development workers.
“We’ve been zapped with one week’s notice. There’s no severance pay, no retraining for us,” unlike the billion dollars offered to departing federal civil servants.
