Formative Evaluation of Canada’s Citizenship Week

Appendix H
Suggestions for Improvement

The items in the following list were offered as suggestions during interviews with persons directly involved with CCW activities, either with the distribution or use of material. They should not be taken as evaluative conclusions about the material or procedures. Rather, they are suggestions from interested participants and, as such, are very meaningful. That said, they do not have the rigour of systematically collected findings and serve more as hypotheses for further consideration than as judgments about CCW components.

  1. Ceremonies benefit from corporate sponsorship. This type of sponsorship is relatively easy to manage because the corporation is typically ready to assign personnel and dollar resources to the event. These events have the additional advantage of involving adult Canadians who otherwise are less likely to pay attention to Citizenship events.
  2. Ceremonies benefit from volunteer help. These volunteers may be associated with a school, with a service club or may be interested individuals willing, often eager, to participate. This type of sponsorship is relatively difficult to manage and typically requires more work than an event managed entirely by CIC officers.
  3. Canada’s Citizenship Week does not stand alone. It is part of a more comprehensive series of activities that promote citizenship privileges, rights and obligations. Actually, CCW is only another event in an annual calendar of events. The promotion of Citizenship takes place throughout the year and takes advantage of a wide range of opportunities, especially those managed by Canadian Heritage.
  4. The current activity book is not as good as the earlier ones that we had when we celebrated in February jointly with Canadian Heritage. Those guides had better activities for children and more in the way of items to hand out individually. Kids like to get things and they like to have hands-on activities.
  5. There is a major need for advance planning, especially for schools, which require as much as six months advance notice.
  6. Reaffirmation ceremonies are marvellous events in the classroom and with Guides and Scouts. Unfortunately, we are not good at going outside of the school and additional venues are required if we are going to impact the full population.
  7. To reach school kids, we should be working through Department of Education curriculum specialists, and we should be working more with curriculum advisors in the school systems.
  8. Kids love flags, colourful posters, pins.
  9. There is a need for more consistency from year to year. Things change too much. The better activities should be repeated from year-to-year.
  10. Simple things matter. For example, charts should come to us rolled — not folded. When rolled, they keep their appearance when pinned to a wall.
    On a very different plane, those responsible for distribution say that the material and the order forms are not designed well to be cost-effective.
  11. Reaffirmation Kits are claimed to be wasteful in that they provide pre-set numbers of specific items as follows: “O Canada” bookmarks, 30 copies; reaffirmation certificates 30 copies; and a leader’s guide to conducting a Reaffirmation Ceremony, including the words for the Oath of Citizenship. Since these can be ordered separately in exact numbers and since the kits have to be hand collated, it is argued that it would be more economical to prepare the material requirements to order rather than prepare kits in advance.
  12. Some items, e.g., flags, are ordered in huge quantities and, in the view of the distribution, section, are, on the one hand, expensive to ship and, on the other hand, not reaching the correct audiences in the right numbers. The latter point is that too many are sent to some addresses and adequate quantities are unavailable to be shipped to later requests.
  13. Forms require extensive editing. The forms are not sufficiently clear on the purposes and quantities for each item listed. Redesigning the form and changing the packaging would prevent this in the view of distribution personnel.
  14. Computer processes are not working well. Even though the addresses of requesters are in a database, it appears that simple counts for numbers of uptake for specific material cannot be generated.
  15. There is duplication of material sent when the same address receives material from the CIC order form and from the request of a Member of Parliament

<< Contents | Previous | Next >>