The MAP project in Montreal. Promoting the socio-professional insertion of female single parents
This article relates an experience of action-research that led to the creation of an organization dedicated to socio-professional insertion of female lone parents with low incomes and children of preschool age: the MAP project (Mères avec pouvoir) in Montreal. With a frame of reference based on a global approach, the development of the capacity to act and the intersectional action, the project was implemented in two sites : Longueuil and the Central south district in Montreal. In Montreal, the global approach becomes a reality by the creation of a residential resource offering various types of support to women's insertion projects: a subsidized dwelling, the access to a childcare centre adjacent to dwellings and support by an intervention team. The project was realized by an interest group of the IRDS and developed with the cooperation of about twenty partners representing various activity areas of the community. Researchers of the IRDS and their partners from the university community were active in all stages of the development of MAP. After a brief presentation of the project parameters, the article describes the main stages of its realization by emphasizing the role of the researchers in this process. Then it gives an insight of the main results of a qualitative evaluation of the effects of the participation to MAP. In the light of the changes observed in the resident's trajectory and the action mechanisms that produced them, the article concludes by drawing the lessons to be taken from this experience.