Women’s Shelters Canada’s knowledge exchange program connects shelters and shelter associations across provinces and territories so that they can share promising practices, insights, and knowledge across the sector. We also coordinate knowledge sharing between leading practitioners and researchers in the field and shelters and shelter workers.
Communities of Practice
A community of practice (CoP) brings together a group of people who share a common area of practice so that they can collectively address their learning needs. CoPs are an opportunity for practitioners to share information, learn from each other, and strengthen their practice. Often, CoPs generate resources that other practitioners can refer to and draw on in their own work.
We’re currently running CoPs on:
- Worker Wellness: This CoP brings together 30 shelters from across the country who are committed to strengthening worker wellness within their organizations. Participants have the opportunity to learn from experts, share best practices from their own work, and connect with others doing this work. This CoP is funded by Unifor and runs from March 2026 to November 2026.
- Economic Empowerment: This CoP brings together 22 shelters from across the country that offer economic empowerment and financial literacy programming for survivors of gender-based violence. This CoP is funded by Women and Gender Equality (WAGE) Canada.
Previous CoPs have focused on second stage shelters, harm reduction, supporting immigrant and refugee survivors, supporting trans women, and housing.
Practice Sharing
WSC regularly identifies and shares promising practices that are working well in one part of the country so that shelters in other parts of the country can learn from these experiences and adopt new ideas into their own work. When funding permits, WSC works with shelters and provincial associations to scale up practices that are showing success at a regional level. Examples include our current Tech Safety Canada project, the Circles of Safety Project, which took an idea developed in Prince Edward Island to three shelters in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Yukon, and the PEACE for Canadian Children & Youth program, which supported a training from British Columbia to be delivered in rural, remote, and northern parts of 13 provinces and territories. Resources from these projects are available in our Resource by Topic section.
Webinars & Trainings
The Knowledge Exchange team also delivers trainings and webinars for shelter workers across the country on a regular basis.
Current opportunities can be found: