Despite the current challenges facing communities and research supporting the benefits of community-led development (CLD), Manitoba hasn’t had a functioning, comprehensive CLD strategy or dedicated funding to support community development organizations since 2019. In the spring of 2024, the Manitoba government launched a new program, From the Ground Up — Safe Healthy Communities for All, to support CLD. This report provides the rationale for a CLD approach and recommendations for how such a community development program and fund can mobilize neighbourhood and community-led development and support the existing neighbourhood renewal corporation (NRC) model, facilitate program expansion, provide both core and project-specific funding to NRCs, and support funding for other key CLD agencies such as Indigenous organizations, women’s centres, and family resource centres.
Based on our analysis, we find that the From the Ground Up (FGU) program is an important and welcome first step in rededicating resources towards CLD in Manitoba and was implemented in an impressively short timeline after the election of the new government in October 2023. The program, however, provides less support than what was previously available in the early 2010s under similar programs and its precursor, the Building Sustainable Communities (BSC) fund. It was also implemented without a formal consultation process and has a tenuous link to CLD practice. We put forward a number of recommendations to consider as the FGU program evolves, including that the FGU program funding envelope should be restored to the level of funding provided under the BSC program to meet the high level of need, and that the program should more clearly incorporate best practices of Neighbourhoods Alive! and other CLD models surveyed in our study, with a community-planning process centrally featured in the program structure to guide the allocation of funding.
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