International Marketplace

The annual International Marketplace provides a forum for local immigrant women to promote their home-based businesses.  Organized by the Immigrant Women’s Centre, the Marketplace provides an opportunity for small entrepreneurs to sell crafts, clothing, jewelry and other products from around the world. The Marketplace has become a much-anticipated and popular event. The event creates valued income-generating opportunities for newcomer women. Additional money raised helps support other IWC projects like Micro-Lending and Refugee Relief.

To learn more about the Marketplace, click here to read media coverage of the event.

The next Marketplace is scheduled for November 2010.  For future details, please visit this page again soon or check back here for more details. 

Micro-lending Initiative

The Immigrant Women’s Centre, in partnership with the Hamilton Social Enterprise Network, is developing a model for micro-credit and peer-lending to promote local economic development.  

Peer-lending provides access tomicro-credit, or small loans, to low-income people or those with nocredithistory and few assets. It is geared to those who want to start abusiness andneed to borrow only a small amount of money. It also provides anopportunity tonetwork and learn more about business from other women.  

Learn more about the Social Enterprise Network.

For future workshops and presentations on micro-credit and peer-lending at the Immigrant Women’s Centre, please visit this page again soon or check back here for more details.

Refugee Relief Project

The Immigrant Women’s Centre is committed to the reunification of families and seeks out opportunities to enable relatives living abroad to settle in Canada whenever possible. One avenue is the Group of Five Refugee Sponsorship program organized by the federal government.      

The program allows groups of five or more Canadian citizens or permanent residents to sponsor refugees coming to Canada. A Group of 5 must provide a settlement plan and prove it can financially support a refugee for one year.  

The IWC is actively involved in promoting this program.   To view a presentation about the Refugee Sponsorship: Group of 5 Program, produced by the IWC.

Get more information on this government program.