Smartsaver Community

Now that’s a great big cheque! Alan Caslin, The Chair of Niagara Region and Acting Commissioner of Community Services and Adrienne Jugley presented this great, BIG cheque worth almost $10,000 to the United Way Niagara Region earlier this year.
This contribution was made possible thanks to the Niagara Region’s efforts to increase local Canada Learning Bond (CLB) take-up. Their hard work combined with the SmartSAVER community incentive for each CLB application through SmartSAVER.org helped the United Way reach their campaign goal.

A recent update of Niagara’s CLB success showed interesting results of their efforts:

• Since it began actively promoting the CLB, the Region has worked with 50 locally active community services, non-profits and government agencies to help more than 600 children access the free federal grant through the SmartSAVER.org online CLB application.
• The promotion has broad impact: annual federal statistics showed an increase of 1,221 children in Niagara that registered for the CLB from March 2015-March 2016.
• If every one of those children was eligible for the maximum $2,000, this could mean $2,442,000 for their post-secondary education.
• Continued growth in the number of children eligible for the CLB makes it difficult for Niagara Region to reach the original goal of 40% take-up by December 2016, but results to date are showing promise. With last year’s improvement, take-up increased to 28.5% across the region by March 2016.

Watch for more CLB activity from the Niagara region!

Judy Sobchak and Maggie Penca
Community Engagement Coordinator & Manager of Compliance and Community Engagement, Homelessness and Community Engagement Division
Community Services Department