The Student Association of George Brown College (SAGBC) has extended the time period to pay the six million dollars that the Association had pledged to George Brown College Foundation (GBCF) in 2013 with an understanding that the majority of the sum would be used in funding student scholarships.
The decision was approved by the SA board in a meeting held on March 21. The SAGBC funds the Dialog.
The SAGBC had pledged a total of six million dollars to the GBCF in 2013, which was to be paid over a period of 10 years and raised through a student levy of $25. Since making the pledge in 2013, SAGBC has paid $3,780,850 of the pledged six million till to date. In the meeting, the SA board extended the time period of the pledge by six years to pay the remaining $2,219,150 of the original pledged amount to GBCF.
The remaining amount would be continued to be raised through a student levy of $25.
Cindy Gouveia, president of GBCF, attended the board meeting and offered a presentation on how the funds that they have received so far were put to use.
According to Gouveia, 75 per cent of the pledged amount was used to fund student scholarships, including a $100,000 donation to The Tommy Douglas Institute.
Gouveia also added that close to 1,600 students received SA Awards and approximately $2,700,000 was disbursed in scholarships.
The funds also led to creating bursaries for students from first nations and LGBTQ communities as well as creating a Single Parent Bursary and Anti-Oppression Practice Student Award.
“After pledging six million dollars to support students as well as capital in 2013, SAGBC became our number one donor at that time,” Gouveia said.
“The impact has been broad and wide with distributions in all academic divisions. Scholarships were given to both international and domestic students.”
In a Q&A session following Gouveia’s presentation, SA director of operations Dhwani Bhalavat expressed the need of providing additional support to students who may be in dire financial situations but may not know how to make a compelling application for scholarships.
Another highlight of the meeting was a presentation on the ongoing governance review of the SAGBC by Neil Price, executive director of a local research and evaluation firm, and Ben Millard, managing partner of a local law firm, who have been hired to complete the governance review as third-party consultants.
Millard said that the governance review is nearing the end of phase one of the process, where they have identified five key issues.
The two consultants summed up that organizational flux and instability, particularly centering around the ongoing challenges with recruiting board members and failures in completion of their terms; lack of clarity in defining roles and responsibilities of board members, and vagueness regarding accountability mechanisms of board members are some of the biggest governance issues that need to be addressed.
Neil Price also informed that in phase one of the review process, they have been interviewing individuals who are not part of SAGBC, and are mostly connected to student associations of other colleges and universities to inquire what these external organizations have done to resolve similar issues.
So far, bylaws and governance policies of 15 other student associations have been reviewed, Price added.
In phase two, GBC students and stakeholders will be interviewed, and Millard will prepare the final recommendations to SAGBC over the coming summer, Price stated.
In the meeting, board members also passed a motion to donate $15,000 from SA self-generated revenue sources to nonprofits based in Canada that are working on supporting Ukraine.
