MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT
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The Fondation
Lucie et André Chagnon became active in October 2000
with a view to forming partnerships to carry out long-term projects
focussed on reducing poverty and preventing disease.
Through the foundation, we hope to make a difference by tackling
the root causes of poverty and disease. We hope that in this
way we can offer children who face poverty and exclusion an
equal opportunity to be successful in school and in their lives.
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Studies on this subject highlight the fact that if you want to change
attitudes and habits, you have to act very early in a person’s
life. For disadvantaged families, early intervention is the best way
to open doors to a more promising future and give children the hopes
of their dreams.
The mission-related orientations of the foundation took shape following
a nine-month listening tour conducted in 2001-2002 in Quebec, the
rest of Canada and abroad. Thanks to the tour, foundation officers
learned what experts, decision makers and partners considered to be
the most promising approaches to prevention.
The tour, during which foundation officers took part in over 40
meetings, produced a number of important findings, including the
need to:
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Allow communities to define their needs and
decide which problems to tackle first
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Incorporate
individual and group approaches to both poverty reduction and
disease prevention |
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Define and assess the impact of preventive
measures
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Be innovative,
while taking best practices into consideration |
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Ensure
long-term funding |
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Evaluate
ways of facilitating the transfer and application of knowledge
to workers in the field, then to communities |
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Develop
expertise and know-how in project evaluation, the levers that
can be used to change people’s behaviour, and epidemiological
data |
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Develop, in the area of prevention, expertise
in use of the media
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André Chagnon
Chairman of the Board
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