Nunavik’s crime prevention fund open for applications

Ungaluk staff, from left to right: Vivien Carli, Minnie Siquaq Tukkiapik, coordinator Sarah Airo, Susie Sakiagak, and Phoebe Atagotaaluk. (PHOTO COURTESY OF UNGALUK)

Nunavik’s Ungaluk Safer Communities program is now ready to receive funding applications for 2017.

The region’s crime prevention fund hands out about $10 million each year to regional and community projects designed to prevent crime, promote safe and healthy communities, provide assistance to victims of crime and support to incarcerated Inuit.

With 70 per cent of the region’s crimes linked to alcohol and drug abuse, and many of them violent, the program tweaked its criteria in 2014 to give higher priority to projects focused on fighting addiction, violence and promoting social reintegration.

Ungaluk is the result of a 2006 deal with the Quebec government, which traded the construction of a provincial jail in Nunavik for about $300 million, with Quebec paying Makivik Corp. and the Kativik Regional Government at least $10 million a year until 2030.

Nunavimmiut can apply for that funding through Ungaluk’s website from now until Sept. 2, 2016.

A selection committee made up of Makivik Corp., the Kativik Regional Government and Government of Quebec appointees will then choose the 2017 recipients in December.

In 2016, Ungaluk will spend $10,276,071 on 47 different projects across the region.

That includes money approved for:

• Isuarsivik, a Kuujjuaq-based in-patient addiction treatment program;

• Jeunes Karibus, an outdoor education program for youth;

• Educational workshops for Nunavimmiut inmates at St. Jerome penitentiary in southern Quebec;

• Saqijuq, a social regulation project aimed at keeping Nunavimmiut out of the justice system;

• Nunavik Youth Hockey Development Program;

• Good Touch, Bad Touch program, which offers sexual abuse prevention training to elementary school-aged children.

Two Ungaluk-funded projects this year are Montreal-based, including support for homeless and at-risk Inuit living in the city, as well as cultural support for Inuit children placed in non-Inuit foster homes.

You can see a full list of regional and community projects that received funding from Ungaluk at its website, although it does not list which amount each project received.