Presentation by Michael Casey - Day II

This is the second day of the OPM. We will be starting with an address by Michael Casey, our executive director. Michael is talking about the challenges and the successes that Development and Peace is experiencing. One huge success is the Haiti collection. Development and Peace raised over $20 million - this rivals what was raised during the Tsunami.

What is different now is that we are being asked to play a leadership role in relief efforts amongst Caritas agencies. This is a new and exciting role for Development and Peace.

More on the challenges. We face financial challenges in the areas where we raise most of our money. Share Life, the major fund raising campaign in the Archdiocese of Toronto, we will be receiving significantly less money due to an overall fund raising drop.

Also, in Hamilton, parishioners were given a choice to donate during Share Lent to Development and Peace or to another Catholic charity. Together, this could mean a short fall of $500,000.00.

In other diocese, bishops are putting conditions on the collection, for example in Pembroke, the bishop will only allow funds collected to be spent in Haiti.

The second challenge - CIDA. We receive approximately $8.5 million per year from CIDA. We are now in the last year of a five-year plan with CIDA. The political climate is now more challenging. Last year, Kairos did not receive funding from CIDA. This was unprecedented and totally unaccepted. This was a political decision, this was not a decision following the due process outlined by CIDA.

It is unclear what will be the impact of Development and Peace's successful advocacy campaign on food, land and water. There may be delays in government funding due possibly to the higher profile that Development and Peace now enjoys.

Share Lent and CIDA represents 85% of our overall funding. We will have to work hard to develop and encourage our ouw social networks to support us in this time of uncertainty.

As a result, we will scale back on the upcoming orientation assembly. The assembly will be modified to reduce costs, but we will look for ways to encourage more participation through social media and through our regional assemblies.