Change starts here.
Change starts here.
United Way of the Lower Mainland has been supporting people in our community, from Pemberton to Langley, for eight decades. As times have changed, so have we. Read more about how we work:
In order to achieve our vision of a healthy, caring, inclusive community and to invest your generously donated dollars wisely, we must focus our efforts. United Way focuses on children and seniors. In good times and bad, United Way is there to protect the vulnerable and prevent social problems by:
Investing in our youngest children, particularly those at risk.
Ensuring that kids are developmentally ready for school can literally change the future.
Helping children 6-12 make the right choices.
Enabling children age 6 to 12 to be healthy, happy and resilient puts them on the right path to future success.
Strengthening the independence of seniors.
By supporting seniors to stay active and live independently, we all benefit.
We’ve done our homework. Working together with social service partners, advocacy groups, labour groups, politicians, research experts, the corporate community and community members, we’ve learned that United Way can create the greatest positive change, for everyone in our community, by focusing on children and seniors and by preventing social issues before they occur. United Way focuses on prevention.
United Way knows that stronger communities cannot be achieved without strengthening the underlying fabric of your community. For example, children cannot be helped in isolation; therefore, we support their families through parenting programs and we support their broader community through our Building Stronger Communities strategy.
INVEST in social services.
RESEARCH and do our homework to understand the key social issues and underlying causes that affect our community.
BRING TOGETHER community, labour, business, government, and non-profit leaders in coordinated action.
ADVOCATE and raise our voice to influence and change public attitudes, systems and policies that stand in our way.
EVALUATE to understand the impact of our investments.
United Way of the Lower Mainland funds social service agencies committed to achieving our vision for change for children and seniors. We support their critical programs and services and strengthen their capacity to deliver these vital services. After nearly eight decades, our commitment continues.
United Way is the only organization funding over 160 social service agencies to deliver more than 500 prevention-based programs and initiatives for vulnerable people throughout Metro Vancouver. Click here to see a list of the programs, initiatives and agencies we support.
United Way works with the research community to investigate the root causes of our most challenging social issues and learns how we can tackle them to ensure lasting change.
For example, United Way funded research, in partnership with UBC and the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP), discovered that children in their middle years are suffering from low self-esteem and are spending too much time at home alone. In response, United Way has invested the largest-ever grant of its kind in support of out-of-school programs. The result: 600 kids every week are involved in after-school programs that provide mentoring, homework support, physical activity and leadership skills.
We engage and mobilize community partners to ensure collaborative action – school boards, governments, unions, business leaders, neighbourhood residents, and others – in identifying social challenges and developing local solutions. By working together, we make the greatest difference.
We add our voice to those advocating policy changes, the transformation of public attitudes, and shifts in systems that get in the way of achieving our goal.
Our planning & investment decisions must achieve positive change. This calls for: meaningful outcomes, key milestones and defined timelines. As part of our evaluation and measurement framework we gather information through:
Research that measures population-level changes.
Evaluation of programs/initiatives we fund.
Evaluation and assessment of investment results.
Building capacity of agencies to measure the impact of their work.
We know that by focusing on the above elements of community change, the lives of seniors, children and all those they touch will be measurably better. No other organization has the same breadth, depth, reach and history of achieving a profound difference in the lives of others.
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