Nunavik’s Ungaluk fund hands out $11 million in 2015

Ungaluk staff Pheobe Attogataaluk, left, and coordinator Sarah Airo speak to regional KRG councillors in Inukjuak last month. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

Nunavik’s Ungaluk crime prevention fund handed out more than $11 million this year to projects across the region.

For 2015, just over 50 successful project applicants received money to pay for everything from healing initiatives to recreational programs to new summer literacy camps.

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.

“Social problems are big in the communities and we are looking for ways to heal,” Ungaluk coordinator Sarah Airo told KRG meetings in Inukjuak last month.

“We don’t want Ungaluk to be looked at as just a funding source, we want the program to be considered something that can make us healthier.”

To do that, Ungaluk was revised in 2014 in order to give higher priority to projects that help reduce substance abuse and addiction across the region.

With 70 per cent of the region’s crimes linked to alcohol and drug abuse, and many of them violent, the program has re-focused its efforts on fighting addiction, violence and promoting social reintegration.

The application and distribution process has also changed, Airo said, to make the funding more accessible to Nunavimmiut.

Anyone can apply for funding, so long as the application highlights Ungaluk’s priorities: the promotion of social integration or reintegration, support for trauma and mental health, and support for victims of crime and violence — all incorporating Inuit culture.

Nunavimmiut can apply for that funding through Ungaluk’s website, and deadlines are more flexible.

“Some communities ask: how much money do we have left? But with this new set-up, we no longer have money designated to each community,” Airo said. “It’s open for all.”

The call for 2016-17 project applications opened June 8 and will remain open until Sept. 4, Airo said.

Among the regional projects who received Ungaluk money in 2015, the Quaqtaq-based Aaqitaurvik healing centre, which offers a number of different healing sessions throughout the region and in southern detention centres where Inuit inmates are serving sentences.

Ungaluk’s 2015 funding will go to recreation programs in the region, including the Nunavik Youth Development Hockey Program and Cirqiniq, Nunavik’s social circus program for youth.

Funding even goes to out-of-region programming, like the Montreal-based Tasiutigiit Strengthening Connections Project. This offers support for Inuit children living primarily in non-Inuit foster and adoptive homes in the greater Montreal area, to help them maintain connections with their community and culture.

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.