The post Building Community Through Movement: Spotlight on Kabir Hosein first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>As an active guy with a background as a high-performance athlete and a career as a coach and in sports administration, Kabir Hosein understands intuitively how physical movement supports wellness. When he moved his family of six from Trinidad to Victoria, BC in 2019, he experienced first-hand the important role physical activity can play in supporting the settlement of newcomers and migrants. “Through my experiences of trying to navigate a very complex series of systems for me to move and enjoy myself, for my wife and kids to move and enjoy themselves, I could see an intervention was needed,” he shares.
His position as an operations manager with the Sport for Life Society in Victoria, BC, put him in a unique position to make change. The organisation was already working to create equitable opportunities for participation in sport and physical activity. Kabir could see that he wouldn’t have to start from scratch: “It wasn’t me necessarily doing something new, but it was finding ways to change the existing system so that newcomers could flourish.”
When one of Kabir’s friends posted on LinkedIn about his certificate from the Refugee Livelihood Lab’s Migrant Systems Change Leadership program (MSCL) at RADIUS based out of Simon Fraser University, Kabir became curious about how the Lab might support him in his work. After learning more about the programs the Lab offered, he crafted his application, focusing on a project he could bring to life through his role at the Sport for Life Society. The project aimed to specifically support people who identified as being new to Canada and was called Wellness through Community Connections. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kabir was accepted into the 2022 online cohort for the Trampoline: Ideas into Action program.
During the program, he set to work designing an initiative that would support newcomers’ overall wellness through both structured and unstructured forms of physical activity. “Moving around at a playground, going on a walk or a hike, participating in shopping tours or museum tours, or even gardening counts,” Kabir explains. “Using these kinds of experiences to express your culture and build connection and understanding within the Canadian community you’re settling into could have a big impact on your body, mind, and soul — your whole life.”
From a tactical perspective, Trampoline equipped Kabir to understand some of the power dynamics that are present when engaging multiple sectors and stakeholders. To change the system, he saw that he would have to appeal to the various needs and wants of others connected with or adjacent to the programs he wanted to create. “Within the first few sessions of Trampoline,” he says, “I could see I was trying to do too much in one step and had to break it down. I thought I had a clearly defined project-management approach, but I needed to put a lot more detail and work into it.” Breaking it down included understanding the interests of the different stakeholder groups. “Recreation parks and trails in most cases are managed and coordinated by municipalities,” he explains. “Okay, so. What are their interests? What are the interests of the local sporting organisations?”
Through learning about liberatory design and systems thinking, conducting an environmental scan, and holding community conversations (a process in Trampoline that has participants seek feedback directly from community members), as well as having discussions with peers and program advisors, Kabir understood that “jumping in without proper understanding was why I had not been making much progress prior to attending the program.” He learned that many local sporting organisations, for example, want to increase membership, and most want to increase their diversity quota. A fraction of them, he says, “authentically want to be engaged and were willing to have the difficult conversations about what [things] needed to be changed and take the right steps to change them.” He points out that it’s not a one size fits all approach. “To disrupt the system,” he says, “I would have to appeal to what would motivate more of these various stakeholders to want to have these conversations in the first place, so that they could in turn buy in and then change the way that they have been doing things.”
Being relatively new to Victoria, it was in doing this preparation, as prescribed by the Lab, that Kabir fully grasped — and developed a nuanced appreciation for — the geographic region he was working in. “There’s a difference between greater Victoria and the Capital Regional District,” he explains. “Victoria has 14 municipalities, eight towns, and four hamlets, and I found out that matters because I went about doing the environmental scan. I learned slowly how to go about doing my research, who to ask, what questions to ask, and when the right time to ask the questions was.”
A key benefit of participating in Trampoline, says Kabir, was “being continuously motivated, especially when there were times where I felt like I was hitting brick walls.” With the support of the Lab facilitators and the cohort around him, he was encouraged to keep pushing forward: “I could see the work that I do today would benefit my kids and their kids and other people and their families, too, and so forth.”
Each weekly session had a predictable delivery model where the Lab facilitators shared some content: a tool, framework, or concept-in-theory the group would be invited to reflect on individually before working through it or discussing it together. Having the “space to play around with the information” helped it marinate, and Kabir reflects that as participants were sharing their experiences within the cohort, “it seemed like each person was having similar challenges in a different way.” Kabir says, “I saw similarities in the ways they went about navigating things with some of the ways in which I navigated some of the challenges. We were helping each other in a community of practice, and it felt good to be a part of it.” The round table with program mentors, which took place about halfway through the program, was yet another chance for feedback. “Some of the mentors were graduates of the Lab, and they were actually doing this work and living it,” Kabir recalls. “They had the experience of how they applied that systems-change approach, and we had an opportunity to present what we were doing and then learn from what they did. It was really helpful.”
The project Kabir brought to Trampoline, Wellness through Community Connections, is still operational today through the Sport for Life Society and is really making a difference by creating opportunities for newcomers to build resilience through connection in their communities. “I had the opportunity to use the adapted approach, based on the learnings from Trampoline, to create proposals for programs in other communities that successfully gained funding,” he explains. “So, it’s no longer just in Victoria, it’s in Surrey, Northern BC, Prince George. We are currently consultants for three National Sport Organizations (Squash, Table Tennis and Soccer) with regards to the EDI initiatives, and as an organisation, we have ongoing projects in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Winnipeg, and a number of other cities or communities that are able now to apply their learnings and gain the support of their stakeholders. It’s really kicked off. But there are also lots of offshoots where I created a pathway for the project and then I integrated the project into existing initiatives of the organisation. And that’s expanding now, too.”
In fact, Kabir has been promoted within the Sport for Life Society not just once (into the Senior Manager position), but twice since attending Trampoline, and he currently serves as the organisation’s Director of Strategic Initiatives. “I actually started implementing a project which gave rise to growth and expansion from a revenue standpoint, from networking and partnerships perspectives as well,” he says. Within the national reach of his director role, he leads not only this project and others like it, but also the engagement for equity-deserving groups. “In addition to a full newcomer programming unit, we now also have an Indigenous Initiatives unit, led by Mataya Jim, that supports physical activity and wellness in the Indigenous community,” he says. “We have projects developing around supporting girls and women with the intersectionality of how they identify. We have programs for low-income families. There is lots in development.”
Kabir’s smile as he shares what Sport for Life has been able to achieve shows how passionate he is about the work he’s doing and how inspired he is by the potential systems implications of holistic physical activity programs. The smile fades a little when he shares a few of the pressure points he contends with, including introducing the potential for programming in places where Sport for Life does not have a physical presence, or in instances where dynamics between community stakeholders or potential partners might be unique and therefore considered not suitable for replicating or adapting an existing framework. “I have learned,” says Kabir, “to move from collaborating to co-creating. We are each on a journey, and when the universe brings us together, that is when the magic happens. So, I am learning from the tortoise to be slow and steady now.”
Accessing funding — and the evaluation required to report on that funding — also presents a significant obstacle. “Often, traditional funders, they like to have an academic institution attached to the evaluation of the initiative,” Kabir explains. “This requires ethics approval, and then the language that is used is actually very confusing for the actual racialised newcomer that we want to be able to understand what we did and how it changed — or didn’t change — the system. I feel like I’m being boxed into that academic space. We almost have to lobby the traditional funders to help them understand that we can’t be boxed into their intended outcomes. When we co-create an approach that hasn’t been done before, and start doing the activity, we need to be consistently responsive to what’s happening. Sometimes we learn that we’re having different outcomes that are more meaningful to the community we’re trying to serve.”
Despite the challenges, Kabir is motivated to do what he can to advance the impact that the Sport for Life Society has with newcomers and other equity-deserving communities, and not get bogged down by things that are beyond reach. “These initiatives could actually create generational changes,” he says. “This work takes time, and we are gradually moving things forward. As Canada recruits close to a million newcomers by 2030, this presents a beautiful opportunity to use sport and physical activity to foster a sense of belonging.” Since participating in Trampoline, Kabir has continued to be connected to and motivated by members of the Lab community, including participants, mentors, and Lab facilitators. Whether it is a sense of connection he feels more broadly when the group shares events, opportunities, and support through their WhatsApp channel, or the handful of closer ties that have led to co-creation and networking opportunities, Kabir says he feels grateful to be part of a remarkable community. “I feel comfortable that whenever there’s a need, if I reach out, I’d be supported,” he says. “I know I have the opportunity to pop into the Lab when I’m in town. I can use it as a meeting space. I know there’s also opportunity to potentially partner with the Lab or others in the network to do systems-change work in the future.”
The Refugee Livelihood Lab is part of a growing movement supporting deep shifts in the systems which govern our lives towards equity, dignity, and sustainability for all people and the planet.
Thank you to our funders Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, and WES Mariam Assefa Fund (MAF).
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]]>The post Purpose-Driven Entrepreneurship: Meet Six Organizations from our Investment Readiness Program Cohort! first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>Social innovation programs cultivate transformative ideas to meet real-world challenges and play a vital role in shaping a more resilient and equitable society. RADIUS SFU partnered with Community Foundations of Canada to deliver a comprehensive six-month Business Model Development program that is a testament to collective action and purpose-driven entrepreneurship. Funded by the Government of Canada’s Social Innovation Strategy through the Investment Readiness Program, this initiative embarked on a journey from June to November 2023 to empower social purpose organizations (SPOs) across Canada as they prepare for investment.
RADIUS welcomed 24 SPOs from various industries, each with a unique vision and mission to address social, cultural, and environmental challenges. Among these organizations were Hello Hair, which aims to redefine the global black hair experience, nurturing self-love and authenticity; Rittenhouse, a grassroots organization dedicated to transformative justice, striving to establish a social purpose enterprise focused on public education and workshops; and KiddieNomics, dedicated to empowering young children with financial literacy skills. Recognizing the importance of representation and equity, the RADIUS team structured two distinct cohorts: an Open Enrollment cohort and a BIPOC Affinity cohort. This thoughtful approach allowed facilitators to delve into the systemic barriers and challenges racialized entrepreneurs face while fostering an environment of trust and solidarity within each cohort.
At the heart of the program lay a commitment to strengthening the business models of mid-stage SPOs, providing them with the tools and knowledge needed to navigate complex landscapes and drive sustainable change. Bi-weekly sessions served as immersive learning platforms, laying the foundation with Business Model Canvas workshops. The subsequent sessions took a critical lens to the building blocks constituting the business model canvas, including Relationship Building (digital and grassroots marketing), Cost Structuring, Financial Planning, and Human Resource Management, ensuring a holistic approach to capacity building. In each session, we had guest speakers with industry experience to further enrich the curriculum, as well as additional workshops like Democratic Decision-Making and the Theory of Change, which fostered thinking and doing differently with intention and community.
One of the most impactful elements of the program was that every participating organization was strategically matched with an advisor from their industry and with entrepreneurial experience. These advisors offered firsthand experience and mentorship, nurturing the growth and resilience of each participant. Khalid Hashi, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of OGOW Health, an award-winning health tech start-up, was paired with Althea Therapy, a digital platform to get access to culturally responsive mental health professionals and online learning experiences. Kemptville Campus, a non-profit community and education centre that is working to create an incubator kitchen facility, was matched with Matthew Campbell, the previous Executive Director of Cloverdale Community Kitchen, where he led the expansion, management, and renovation of a comprehensive kitchen renovation project accommodating 200,000 lbs of food inventory. Mokami Status of Women Council (MSWC), a feminist charity in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland & Labrador, explored opportunities to expand its Supportive Living Program to include Second Stage Housing. MSWC was matched with advisor Nauren Ali, a Chartered Professional Accountant specializing in startups, to help develop their cash flow projections using an equity-centred approach in preparation for securing investment.
The program’s impact extended beyond its curriculum, embodying a broader community resilience and empowerment vision. Through the Investment Readiness Program Learning Initiative, RADIUS and Community Foundations Canada provided invaluable guidance, tools, and networks, empowering participants to build more resilient communities for the future. The program’s success was a testament to the dedication and adaptability of its participants, who embraced challenges with courage and commitment.
As we reflect on the journey of the Business Model Development program, we celebrate each participant’s resilience, creativity, and commitment. Together, we embark on a collective journey towards a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable future.
We are thrilled to spotlight six participants from the program:
Anita Grant
Anita Grant of Hello Hair, is a business consultant during the day, a social entrepreneur by night, and a devoted mother and wife around the clock. While her passion encompasses all things business, she often refers to Hello Hair as her life’s purpose. Founded in 2022, Hello Hair is more than a brand—it’s a movement. We’re devoted to nurturing self-love in every child by celebrating their beautiful crown. Our mission is to redefine the global black hair experience, leading to a new era of authenticity and confidence. As advocates for natural hair education, Hello Hair is your go-to source for empowering generations with knowledge, representation, and pride. Together, we create a world where every curl, coil, and kink is not just accepted but celebrated.
Contact Info:
hellohairbook.com
Instagram: @hellohair_book
“The most significant takeaway was the community and network formed through this program. I’ve connected with fellow participants beyond the program, fostering resource sharing and discovering new opportunities. The program lead, Bahar, has provided me with confidence and reassurance that I’m moving in the right direction.”
Stacy Brown
KiddieNomics is an innovative educational initiative dedicated to empowering young children with financial literacy skills. Through engaging, age-appropriate content, we aim to lay the foundation for sound financial decision-making, fostering a generation of informed, responsible adults. Our interactive lessons cover budgeting, saving, investing, the value of money and much more, making complex concepts accessible and fun. KiddieNomics is more than just a learning platform; it’s a movement towards inclusive, impactful education, celebrating diversity and encouraging children to dream big. Let’s build a financially savvy future for kids, one lesson at a time! #KiddieNomics #FinancialLiteracyForKids
Contact Info
Instagram: kiddienomics
Twitter: @KiddieNomics_
Facebook: KiddieNomics
YouTube: KiddieNomics
LinkedIn: KiddieNomics
TikTok: @kiddienomics
“My favourite part of the program was the mentoring portion with my assigned mentor Ideen. He was absolutely phenomenal, he listened to my ideas, gave honest feedback and found solutions to challenges that I was facing. It is my hope to stay in contact with Ideen as KiddieNomics develops. Overall it was an extremely positive experience being a part of the RADIUS program, they are doing great work!”
Micheline Khan
Althea Therapy is a digital platform to get access to culturally responsive mental health professionals and online learning experiences. We have two main support pathways: our app to connect with Black, Indigenous and racialized therapists and our signature program, the Reclaim Program, to learn culturally responsive tools to reduce stress and anxiety, paired with live mental health support. Our goal is to destigmatize therapy and to reduce racial mental health disparities across the country.
“Engaging in the IRP Business Development Program, facilitated by RADIUS SFU, has greatly influenced both my professional growth and the trajectory of my business.
One of the program’s standout features was the mentorship component, which has undeniably left a lasting impact on my business. Having direct access to a mentor allowed me to receive personalized guidance, share experiences, and gain invaluable insights from someone with a wealth of practical knowledge.”
With a commitment to supporting women and gender-diverse individuals and tackling gender-based issues, Mokami Status of Women Council (MSWC) operates as a feminist charity in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland & Labrador. In the pursuit of creating meaningful social impact, MSWC, through the IRP Business Development Program, explored opportunities to expand its Supportive Living Program to include Second Stage Housing. The goal of this initiative is to empower residents, allowing them to transition to greater independence at their own pace. Additionally, MSWC delved into expanding its social enterprise thrift store and supportive employment program, with the goal of generating revenue to fund impactful projects and provide increased employment opportunities for women and gender-diverse individuals.
Kemptville Campus is a non-profit community and education centre, renewing the lands and buildings of the former Kemptville Agricultural College. With a mandate to foster education and training, local economic development, and sustainable food systems, the Campus is working to create an incubator kitchen facility. The core of the incubator will be a shared rental kitchen space that meets Public Health requirements for commercial production, providing flexible and affordable kitchen access to new entrepreneurs, growing businesses and community organizations. Additional offerings will include specialized training, networking and mentorship opportunities, and business support to help small food producers collaborate, learn and thrive. We envision the incubator as a hub in a vibrant, integrated local food ecosystem, building connections between producers, processors, retailers and eaters.
“At the start, I felt like I was very new to social enterprise and SPOs, but I learned that we are already doing a lot of this work. We just didn’t have the language to describe it in these terms. Now I feel more confident in my role, with a frame of reference, many resources and other examples to draw on.”
Our initiative is to create a social purpose enterprise of facilitators delivering public education and workshops to community organizations around transformative justice, conflict resolution and alternatives to calling the police or barring clients from services and resources. Rittenhouse is a small grassroots organization staffed by people with lived experience delivering facilitation and supporting prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families. This initiative provided paid training in transformative justice facilitation to nine people with lived experience of incarceration with the aim of creating decent, meaningful work opportunities for the participants.
Contact Info:
“This program reiterated to us the need to create our own work opportunities for criminalized people in the spirit of transformative justice. People with criminal records have always faced barriers and obstacles to decent and meaningful employment and this program aims not only to create these positions but to raise awareness of how much these opportunities are needed and how they can be transformational in our community staying free.”
Congratulations to all the incredible SPOs for embarking on their business development journey with us! Learn more about the rest of the cohort:
To learn more about the Investment Readiness Program Learning Initiative, visit the CFC website. To learn more about RADIUS, visit our website and our Equity-Centred Accelerator page.
The post Purpose-Driven Entrepreneurship: Meet Six Organizations from our Investment Readiness Program Cohort! first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>The post Meet RADIUS’ New Strategic Partnerships Associate Director, Laurel Sabur first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>Laurel (Oluchi) Sabur (she/her) was born on the beautiful island of Jamaica. Laurel discovered her love for cultures and communities through travelling and her eventual migration to Canada. She enjoys learning intercultural ways to create a symbiotic relationship with our planet and loves immersing herself in nature and exploring herself through movement.
Laurel joins RADIUS as a key member of the leadership team and is responsible for developing partnerships and funding strategies. Laurel has experience in social finance, community economic development, and investment management. Her interdisciplinary career includes mobilizing capital in communities on behalf of impact investors and funders (family offices, foundations, municipality). Most recently, she worked with one of Canada’s wholesalers for the social finance fund, sourcing and conducting due diligence on private equity and debt investment opportunities and initiating a community investment strategy.
One of her interests is supporting more community-owned and led funding strategies. She is also a social entrepreneur and has worked in Jamaica, Canada, Ghana, and Kenya. She holds a Master of Science in Applied Mathematics from the University of Western Ontario, a Bachelor of Actuarial Science from the University of West Indies, and a Community Economic Development Certificate from Simon Fraser University.
We asked Laurel what she is most excited about stepping into this role and what she hopes for in 2024:
“I am excited about my own learning and unlearning that has already started to take place with the team, and I am looking forward to my growth as a human. RADIUS SFU has established a reputation for deep community-informed strategies, including the equity-centred accelerator programs and Labs serving refugee and BIPOC entrepreneurs. This, in conjunction with the systems change that the team leads through its equity-centred design training and engagement, really excites me.
This year, I am looking forward to more integration of social finance and participatory investing within the work of RADIUS as the demand for this grows within the ecosystem.
What I love about the team is how intentional they are about shifting power to community, and so far, it has challenged me to always think more about the process instead of only the outcome. Long-term impact where deep democracy takes form is truly about the HOW and not just about the WHAT. I look forward to the journey of supporting more community-informed and led strategies that can yield a win-win for community and funders.”
To learn more about RADIUS and our work, head to our Vision and Principles page and sign up for our newsletter here.
Header image by Alesia Kaz.
The post Meet RADIUS’ New Strategic Partnerships Associate Director, Laurel Sabur first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>The post Farewell to Our Founder, Shawn Smith first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>RADIUS (RADical Ideas, Useful to Society) was founded in 2013 as a social innovation lab and venture incubator.
Its purpose was to encourage the emergence of a healthy, sustainable economy; it did so through education of emerging changemakers, the dream of a Lab to develop, test, and launch new interventions, and identifying and amplifying Ventures working on meaningful solutions.
Today, RADIUS brings together social innovators, entrepreneurs, and community leaders to collectively work towards a transformed economy that is dynamic, just, sustainable and resilient. We collaboratively build the shared capacity, networks, and solutions needed through cohort-based programs and experiential labs. We do this while engaging in internal reflection on Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) and assisting in hosting community-led processes for addressing tough challenges.
What a difference 10+ years can make.
This month, our co-founder Shawn Smith is stepping away from RADIUS—and we would like to take a moment to thank him.
Shawn’s vision led to the creation of RADIUS: his drive found supporters, partners, and alliances; his passion found collaborators and like-minded disrupters, and his dedication as an educator inspired hundreds of students and entrepreneurs. RADIUS’ journey has not been easy, or perfect, or clear. It has been (as most social innovation projects born in design-thinking have been) challenging and messy, inspiring, and hard, visionary and harmful, inspiring and sobering; it’s a journey we’re grateful to be on.
Thank you, Shawn—not only for creating RADIUS all those years ago but for trusting this team to carry it on without you.
With gratitude,
The RADIUS Team
After over a decade helping build and lead RADIUS and social innovation activities more broadly at SFU, I am leaving my day-to-day role in the organization today.
It has at times felt unimaginable that I would be foolish enough to ever leave such a brilliant and loving team, particularly as our economic transformation mission feels more relevant and critical every day. And yet, everything has its time, and a mix of family care responsibilities and an itch to use what I’ve learned in new ways have slowly made it clear that that time is about right.
Years ago, I would worry about when and how to ever figure out the right moment to leave an organization as a founder, but in reality, RADIUS has developed a strong co-leadership model that has allowed us to make this transition quite gradually. The core ideas that drive RADIUS have long come from many places. There is no moment. The organization continues tomorrow as today, with an embarrassment of leadership riches, a compelling vision, rock-solid underlying principles, and a team I would back any day to take this work forward.
I have grown and been changed immensely here and owe a deep debt of gratitude to the many colleagues, friends and friendly critics who have helped me along on that journey. To all of those collaborators, partners and co-conspirators over 10+ years – and there are really so many of you – we did some amazing work, and I’m so glad to have had the chance to do it with you. To the current team (seriously, check out that team!), I am so inspired by each of you and by the collective you, and I’ll always feel lucky to have been a part of it all.
I won’t be far away. Playing with my kids a bit more, finding new ways to help build a better economy, and cheering you all on harder than anyone. Don’t be strangers.
With love and appreciation,
Shawn Smith
The post Farewell to Our Founder, Shawn Smith first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>The post February is Black History Month first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>Cover image: Hogan’s Alley, Vancouver. Vancouver archives.
February is Black History Month. We invite you to join us to celebrate, explore, and reflect on the histories and contributions of our Black community.
Within our organization, we draw on the perspectives of people from diverse cultural backgrounds to (re)imagine a future economy and reality rooted in joy, justice, equity, and love. We aim to foster a place of belonging and learning where Black entrepreneurs, activists, and learners can thrive and drive the change they know is needed in their communities. We believe the path forward must be shaped by the ideas of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Colour who have been historically and persistently pushed to the margins in our society.
While Black History Month has only been recognized in Canada since 1979, Black people’s contributions have been a critical part of Canadian history. The Colored Conventions, as one example, was a movement starting in the 1830s by Black organizers, educators, entrepreneurs, church leaders, and writers—as well as many undocumented members—in response to discrimination and exclusionary laws in the U.S. Over 200 gatherings over seven decades took place to organize and strategize for racial justice. Through her participation in the conventions, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Canada’s first woman publisher, is remembered for her activism and journalism in the Canadian newspaper she established in Ontario, The Provincial Freeman. Through her work, she advanced the causes of racial equity, Black nationalism, emigration to Canada, self-education, and Black women’s political and economic empowerment.
The systems we live under—White supremacy, colonialism, capitalism—have and continue to exploit, erase, and harm the lives and lived experiences of Black people. The evidence is all around us if you look. In Vancouver, Hogan’s Alley was a thriving Black neighbourhood, part of the ethnically diverse East End, centred between Prior and Union and Main and Jackson until the 1960s. The neighbourhood was targeted for “urban renewal” and rezoning, which made it difficult for the Black population to obtain mortgages or make home improvements. Newspapers ran stories about the neighbourhood being a slum and centre for crime. Homes, community institutions, and buildings were demolished to build the Georgia viaduct, and the City seized the western end of Hogan’s Alley. Since its demise, no identifiably Black neighbourhood has emerged in Vancouver.
Organizations like Hogan’s Alley Society and BC Black History Awareness Society are creating awareness of the history of Black communities in B.C., celebrating their achievements, and advancing their social, political, economic, and cultural well-being through their operations, programming, and education.
Dismantling harmful systems and (re)building new ones requires generations of work and begins with recognizing the biases that exist on personal, institutional, and systemic levels. It also necessitates making space for stories about Black joy, solidarity, resilience, celebration, and liberation.
We compiled a list of resources as a starting point to spark curiosity and to participate in the learning and celebratory events led by our Black community. We hope you will take this opportunity to engage deeply with yourself and the community this month and beyond.
RADIUS worked alongside 24 Social Purpose Organizations in 2023 to support their financing journeys. Below are some of the Black-led and Black-serving organizations:
Program Advisors:
Learn more about our work with the Investment Readiness Program here, and stay tuned for an upcoming story where we highlight participants and reflect on the program.
The post February is Black History Month first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>The post Embracing Resilient Care: Mayra's Transformational Journey first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>With a genuine love for her community, Mayra Gonzalez stands as a dedicated advocate for mental health, embodying her commitment to making a difference. When she was a law student, she co-hosted a radio program that invited professors and professionals to explore social issues. The days when they had psychologists on the air particularly inspired her — seeing the problems from a psychology lens underlined the mental health impacts of conflict arising out of legal issues. Recalling her time practicing family, civil, and criminal law, she says, “Even when people were getting a positive resolution from the judge, they were still unhappy. My clients were experiencing depression, anxiety, and the effects of trauma. I noticed that once they started having that mental health and emotional support, they were actually shifting the way that they were seeing things. It was even changing the way that they wanted to go through their case. Witnessing these internal changes made me very interested in how meaningful it is to support people’s well-being so that they can make better decisions for their lives.”
After working as a lawyer for a few years and reflecting — what felt like constantly — on the misalignment between her own values and the realities of working within a corrupt legal system, she decided that she wanted to advocate more about mental health. It had become very clear that her work in the world should focus on “learning more about the psychological and emotional transformations people go through.” She switched gears and started a psychology degree. “All those internal processes of change that foster wellbeing are critical,” she says. “That proactive piece felt really important to me. If we are taking care of ourselves, then the decisions that we can make will be different.”
Two years into her studies, at the age of 29, Mayra immigrated to Canada to be with her husband. Seeking to continue her education, she began investigating the pathway to becoming a clinical psychologist. “It was a long path that wasn’t available to me,” she explains. “I was experiencing different barriers as an immigrant. I don’t have the privilege of affording all those years and having the money and everything you need to get into that process. And then I learned about counselling psychology, and I saw it as a pathway to work in the career I was passionate about.”
The prerequisites to becoming a registered counsellor took years to complete. “It’s been quite the process for me just to build one thing at a time, to get my permanent residency, to register, land a spot, and finalise the pre-requisite courses, then apply for — and get — the acceptance to the master’s program,” she says. “When I came here, I could communicate, but my English wasn’t strong. I started studying some English courses in the cheapest school I could find. I tried to get volunteer positions, but they rejected me because of my language barrier. I would approach nonprofits who said they supported immigrants and say, ‘Hey, I have this professional goal. I want to become a counsellor.’ They would say, ‘We don’t have academic English courses, or we don’t have those supports, or, but you’re an immigrant and it will be hard.’” She started studying for the TOEFL exam anyway and chipped away at some online, self-paced introductory courses related to counselling through Athabasca University.
Aside from the language and academic barriers she faced, Mayra is the first to acknowledge that what she’s doing is not a path that any married woman can take, sharing, “Most of the time there are goals — or pressures — to have a family. I experienced a lot of stigma, not only as an immigrant, but because I was a 28-year-old woman.” At one point, she and her husband met with a financial advisor to see if they might qualify for a student loan. They were working on a budget and wanted to understand the realities of carrying that debt. “He was like, oh, but you’re a woman, so you like to get a lot of makeup. You want to buy a lot of clothing, then you’re going to have a family, you’re going to have kids,” she recalls. She paused the conversation, shared that she was feeling triggered by his comments, and asked him to stop. “He replied, ‘Oh. You have a lot of problems,’” she says. Thinking back, Mayra reflects, “What I experienced were harmful practices that reinforced the oppression cisgender women coming to Canada after the age of 25 often experience. All these assumptions about who I was and what was important to me reflected stereotypes that uphold these dominant narratives.”
Feeling isolated and alone, a glimmer of light appeared when Mayra was accepted into the YWCA’s Focus@Work program, which, she says, “changed my life because I learned that I deserve to follow my calling and the career I envision for myself. I started believing that I could follow my aspirations and shed the oppressive narrative of being an immigrant woman and having kids without the possibility to grow professionally.” Not long after, she said yes to her first job in Canada at Mountain Equipment Co-op (now Mountain Equipment Company). Shortly after that, she passed her IELTS exam and was able to start taking some courses towards the Guidance Studies Diploma at UBC, a stepping stone to the university’s master’s in counselling program. Once in the Guidance Studies Diploma program, she began volunteering at the Chimo Community Services Crisis Line, and she stayed there for five years.
In 2019, Mayra started working as a part-time youth counsellor in a recovery program. In this role, though she felt like she was making an impact, she often experienced hostility, microaggressions, and blatant racism from her clients, especially when working alone. When the pandemic began, Mayra felt overwhelmed by how life had changed, and working in this kind of environment became unsustainable. She made the decision to leave her job, recalling, “There were many times that I experienced racism, and I didn’t really feel the support from my team. So, I felt triggered constantly. My manager felt bad about it and apologised, but the answer was, ‘Well, they are young. What else can you do?’” This experience planted a seed for Mayra about how helpers like her, who identify as BIPOC, negotiate everyday racism in white-normed institutions. She also experienced racialised behaviours from callers in distress at the Crisis Line who requested to talk to someone else after hearing her accent. She began to recognise racist practices from a dominant script that dictates oppressive identities for BIPOC individuals.
While continuing with her studies and her volunteer position at the Crisis Line, Mayra saw a posting for another part-time position, an assistant coordinator role open to student applicants at the UBC AMS (Alma Mater Society), a nonprofit that advocates for students at the university. Though her life was already jam-packed, accepting the role was worth the extra stretch. “I knew the benefits of being in the space, [the skills I would develop, and the experience I would gain would make the low pay worth it in the end],” she says. Part of what she found “a privilege and a blessing” about the work was that the team was merging two service offerings: providing education and outreach about substance use and providing peer support for those in need. The other benefit was the team itself; all three staff members on the project were students, and all three identified as BIPOC folks: “We got to actually have these conversations about what being a BIPOC student means, and how hard and challenging it is, and the barriers that you might experience.” These conversations allowed the team to deeply explore the possibilities for change within internal processes. “We would talk about these dynamics where we were in meetings or when we’re at school, in classes, and having discussions,” she says. “There’s this power dynamic that unconsciously happens, dominant scripts where when there’s a time for someone to talk, let’s say in a class or a discussion, someone who identifies as being from the dominant group will speak first, and folks who identify as BIPOC like me and these other students, they would just wait, or they would just be silent.” Noticing these patterns when they were thinking about merging the two services was critical in how Mayra’s team approached the work. “We heard a lot of feedback from students, from people from other nonprofits inside UBC, that it can be so intimidating as a student to ask for help from someone who might have a position of power. So, we actually were taking that into account. And we found that because we were a BIPOC team, somehow, we were bringing that diversity piece in automatically, and it was a welcoming piece for students to feel more comfortable, no matter where they were coming from.” Looking back, working with the UBC AMS was the best job Mayra has had so far, “because I realised the positive impact of launching a new service tackling the students’ needs. It was a meaningful experience that allowed me to do something valuable for a population with unique struggles. I also learned about the specific challenges that international students face in silence.”
When the UBC AMS contract closed, Mayra started applying for work with other nonprofits. Having learned about the disadvantages faced by international students, she decided to apply for a position with another nonprofit, one that supported immigrants and refugees by providing employment information workshops, resume and cover letter reviews, and other settlement services. In this role, Mayra attended a session hosted by AMSSA (Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies of BC) that was open to all community workers from nonprofits. The session just happened to be led by a RADIUS Lab facilitator who was also a registered counsellor. “I was attracted to her way of explaining conflict resolution, how conscious she was to create safety for the group, and how social justice-oriented the session was,” Mayra says. “I reached out to her, and I remember feeling nervous because it was my first networking attempt — I just wanted to learn more about areas in counselling that you can specialise in.” She gives a little laugh. “It was my birthday on the day we connected, so I was happy because it was my birthday gift just to connect with someone and have a conversation that I found meaningful. We explored our curiosities, and I asked her about the work that she does, and I ended up sharing that I would like to do something for the community, but I haven’t found a space. She asked me if I had ever heard of RADIUS.”
Mayra was inspired by what she read about RADIUS and the Migrant Systems Change Leadership program (MSCL, previously Beyond Borders), but wasn’t sure if the time was right for her to apply. Mayra sees herself as a connector, and as she explored the RADIUS website, she began to share the program with others. In the meantime, she took another series of workshops about anti-oppressive practices for community workers in nonprofits. After the anti-oppression workshops, Mayra noticed the reality of the harm caused by approaching clients from a relationship of having power over them by being the expert. Additionally, she noticed a hierarchy of power at the institutional level, where staff are overworked and underpaid. BIPOC folks become invisible within systemic oppression, their voices are unheard, and they are undervalued. “I was advocating about having more training sessions about anti-oppression, gender equality practices, having more opportunities to train the staff to know about stress response and trauma and how that might look for people and clients because we were getting a lot of people in distress and staff didn’t know what to do,” she says. She felt that it was crucial to implement more training opportunities for staff to learn and understand how trauma and the stress response manifest and present in people so that they are better equipped to manage these delicate situations and provide responses and solutions that are safe and informed. She joined the Diversity and Inclusion committee inside the nonprofit to advocate for change more broadly. Sadly, Mayra found that navigating the hierarchical systems in an environment fraught with injustice was not the way to implement the change that she was hoping for. This, fortunately, encouraged her to continue down her path of social justice and advocacy for the change that she would like to see, but to do so in environments that are prepared to meet her with a collaborative and egalitarian approach.
Feeling exhausted and unable to unsee all the oppression that was happening, it became difficult for Mayra to advocate for clients. She started to feel like a squeaky wheel. “Sometimes my manager would listen to me, and we could create this connection to better serve our clients, and it was nice, that dialogue and bringing awareness about social justice,” she says. “Most of the international students that I served through my work came from programs offered through colleges that have limited resources. I advocated to bring guest speakers from more privileged spaces in to share more resources and learning opportunities that this group wouldn’t typically have access to. I fostered dialogues about education equity, and how we can bridge the gap and better support underserved populations like international students with potential partnerships.” Often, though, the oppression weighed on her: “I was triggered by all these layers of oppression that I had been exposed to, and it just kept happening in my workplace.” When she decided to leave, she received positive feedback from many of her clients, validating that she was on the right track towards living in her values. “Even though I didn’t have a job to move on to, I could see I did something good while I was there,” she says.
Mayra’s decision to walk away from her job prompted her to tend to her mental health. She took the time to go into her grief and focus on her own healing: “[I cried a lot. I was so burned out. I worked on my recovery and convinced myself that it was a good decision. I found some support from a counsellor who let me pay what I could.]” This self-care created an opening for her to re-explore and later apply for the Migrant Systems Change Leadership Certificate program (MSCL) at RADIUS. In August 2022, she stepped into the circle as a member of the cohort, seeking to bring a project to life that would educate service workers and support the mental health of immigrants and newcomers and help them be successful in Canada. “I just remember sitting with everyone and sharing our struggles,” she says. “I could tell I was in survival mode. I could feel that other participants were fighting within themselves and entering this space in survival mode as well. I remember looking at everyone and saying, ‘Can we just pause and acknowledge that we all made it? Despite all those things that are so hurtful, we made it here, to this supportive space that is nurturing and really cares about our journeys.’” She could feel people in the room exhale around her. It was more validation that she was not alone and was on the right path.
Over the course of MSCL, Mayra began to feel more comfortable, more herself, thanks to the facilitators and the other team members, the space, and the conversations. “Overall, that is what RADIUS has given me, that sense of, okay, this is the reality here, that sometimes it’s so uncomfortable, but there are options,” she says. “We can navigate with this, and we can find possibilities within this resistance, within this tension. There’s something that is positive instead of reinforcing hate about the system and between groups.”
This feeling of confidence in her ability to navigate oppressive systems and to choose possibility is something Mayra wants to bring into her project. “I want to bring safety, the ability to have those hard conversations, but at the same time, bring positive experiences that highlight that BIPOC international students can choose. We can decide to perform a resilient story instead of a survival one. We work in all these environments that seem so nurturing and caring and grounded and values-centred. They have all this information about what the system looks like, and yet we are all learning as we go. We’re learning ways to navigate this reality, learning ways to stay grounded ourselves, learning ways to create a space that is positive. The reality is when you realise that something — a person or a situation — was racist, and it happened against you, it is so easy to be triggered, and living in a state of being triggered takes its toll on our mental health. I want to bring more dialogue, more connection, and more compassion into the work we do and how we live.”
In early 2023, Mayra participated in RADIUS’ Trampoline program. “I’m not going to lie,” Mayra says, “sometimes I noticed that when I was doing some research and seeing all these difficult situations that people have been going through, I thought, this is so horrible, and I went into survival mode myself. So, I learned that I need to support my nervous system when I’m doing that research.” The conversations with Trampoline co-creators helped her to humanise things and bring pieces of compassion into those difficult dialogues of racism. Welcoming someone “as they are” is something Mayra says the RADIUS team does very well. “They are positive role models. They bring compassion in the way they present themselves; they seem more grounded, and they have a presence that matters. Even when I might be nervous or my stress response is activated, just having that presence of someone with a calm nervous system will help me feel calmer.” She noticed herself becoming more open to organic conversations about the reality of social issues and more able to be curious about the experiences of others.
Mayra’s project idea requires that she be a registered counsellor to allow her to responsibly hold a space of exploration and healing. As she works towards this certification, she is putting pieces together one at a time to complement the knowledge she is developing through her studies. As a BIPOC student counsellor navigating a system, she became curious about the dilemmas that arise when racialised BIPOC individuals like her become helpers in a profession rooted in whiteness. How is it possible to hold the values of social justice and care for the clients when one is experiencing racism from those same clients or institutions? There are manifestations of systemic racism within institutions and outside organisations. Through Mayra’s lived experiences, she recognises the relevance of offering a safe space to pause and explore different experiences of self: “To connect with others and share unpleasant racist experiences to avoid the internalisation of oppression and instead foster compassion for building another path that leads to resilient and thriving stories. Safe spaces to explore experiences of gender inequalities and racialised behaviours can enhance hope and, most importantly, the awareness of the possibility of building systems of change, internally within the identity and outside, regarding becoming an agent of change.”
In fact, developing this project while she is a student has its benefits. It allows her to show up curiously with registered counsellors and other professionals and ask “what if” questions to support her thinking around her approach. This is where Trampoline has been very useful, helping her to think about — and rethink — her idea. With Trampoline’s encouragement, Mayra explored her idea further, deepening her connections with people. While doing this work, she came across a Narrative Training that, by externalising the dominant discourses around social issues, helped her better understand those issues as inherently political acts. This helped her make more sense of her lived experiences and understand the impact of racial practices on BIPOC individuals. Mayra encountered several racialised behaviours in her work and volunteering experiences that made her wonder where BIPOC women students go to process painful experiences throughout her own journey. She expresses, “I have felt so isolated, and I know how important community and connection is. So, I think, what if we brought a group of international BIPOC women together? We could build a sense of welcoming, have consistent sessions, and create a space for real sharing.”
To her knowledge, a group like this, specifically for BIPOC international students in higher education who also identify as women, doesn’t exist within the counselling realm in Vancouver yet. There is a professor at the University of Victoria who is running a group counselling program for Canadian Asian students and working with a storytelling approach. Narrative therapy, Mayra explains, “is a psychotherapy approach that focuses on the stories people create about their lives. This framework sees the relation between the person and the social and political circumstances. So, the person’s problem doesn’t come from the internal psyche. It’s more about what’s happening on the outside. It explores the practices outside that are recruiting you in the experience of oppression that could lead on developing impostor syndrome. I like this approach because it’s political in that way — it helps clients from a therapeutic stance to reflect on the values outside and explore the values that they really want to honour. Like, what’s another story that you want to build?” This psychotherapy relies on creating counter-stories that align more with the values of the individuals, and it feels like an approach that’s closer to what Mayra has in mind. She has connected with this professor, and he has offered his support when she has questions or concerns. By being in connection with him, she has already gained insight into how to talk about the work so it feels authentic for folks who need it while also garnering the systemic support required to fund the program: “Thinking about how I’m going to bring that idea in a way that invites compassionate dialogue for something that can be really hard to acknowledge in the room.” Mayra recalls how challenging it was to navigate racialised behaviours in silence, as it was difficult to even talk about it with close friends due to the heaviness of emotions it triggered, such as feeling shamed. During the Trampoline program, she received positive feedback regarding the relevance of the space for BIPOC women students and racial discourse conversations, and some folks even offered to be participants in the pilot project.
Now that she is participating in RADIUS’ BUILD program, Mayra has a much more solid idea of her project, and the program is helping her refine her idea and bring it to life. She is thinking, for example, a lot about the name for the group, what values underpin the project, and what the benefits of participation could be. For now, she’s calling it Resilient Identity and Peak Performance: Overcoming Imposter Phenomenon, because she thinks it reflects the potential for resilient change within one’s identity and academic performance narratives, which are negatively impacted when BIPOC students encounter racialised discourses from institutions and workplaces. Just having those conversations has helped her remind herself why she’s so passionate about doing this work and has given her more motivation to find ways to navigate the system. “RADIUS has been helping me find ways to navigate the system. I think the ways they are doing it are working, and I need to find out what works for me, now that I’m building my own understanding of the systemic layers of oppression, in which there are dominant scripts and values in place. Having these kinds of conversations about liberatory ideas of change with the program team helps me to have different perspectives on not taking things personally. I’m still integrating all of this for myself. I’m still holding crucial questions around the language that I’m going to use to create compassionate dialogues within the system when I’m applying for funding, or even just trying to find a place to run the program within an institution. Now, because of my experience with RADIUS, I am aware of those languages, and I’m just figuring out how to make them my own.”
Eight years after coming to Canada, Mayra began her master’s in counselling at CityU in September 2023. “I have learned over my life that I’m not just a doer,” she says. “I don’t just support immigrants in nonprofits for employment or help them to feel safe and knowledgeable about the services that exist. I am not just my accomplishments or my career; I am so many things. I’m this human being that also enjoys doing yoga, connecting with nature and people. And I’m coming at this life from a social location as an immigrant, cisgender woman, who also identifies as a Mexican.” Overall, Mayra feels like she’s in the flow of her life’s work. Her journey of instigating transformative change bears a striking resemblance to the art of scuba diving: she recognises the importance of preparation and gradual immersion. As she eloquently puts it, “Just as there’s a specific breath you take while submerging to adapt to the increasing pressure, I now have the confidence to delve deeper. I’m no longer gripped by fear; I believe that it’s all going to be just fine.” This analogy beautifully encapsulates her evolving confidence and her readiness for the challenges ahead.
The Refugee Livelihood Lab is part of a growing movement supporting deep shifts in the systems which govern our lives towards equity, dignity, and sustainability for all people and the planet.
Thank you to our funders Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, and WES Mariam Assefa Fund (MAF).
The post Embracing Resilient Care: Mayra's Transformational Journey first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>The post Walk in My Shoes: Spotlight on Carla Carvalho first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>Carla Carvalho, a registered clinical counsellor at Strawberries and Sunshine Wellness Collective in Port Coquitlam, B.C., has always been passionate about storytelling as a pathway to empathy and healing. Originally from Brazil, Carla came to Canada in December 2015 and experienced life as a newcomer in Canada as “a bumpy road in terms of settling as an immigrant,” in large part because recertification in her area of expertise was logistically and financially challenging, and employment opportunities relied heavily on referrals and references (which, as a newcomer, were not easily available to her).
In 2022, after taking stock of her own experience and the stories of those she is in relationship with personally and professionally, she decided to apply for a Neighbourhood Small Grant (NSG) from the City of Coquitlam. She proposed that the grant would support her in developing a project she called Walk in My Shoes, which would invite people to take short walks while listening to stories shared by newcomers to Canada. By scanning a QR code, folks would be directed to a podcast series that showcased stories shared by five immigrant women in the Tri-Cities area. Carla hoped that the paired acts of walking and listening would enhance belonging, cultural awareness, and connection in her community. Her grant application was successful, and the podcast stories launched in March 2023.
That same month, Carla applied to the RADIUS Trampoline program, already focused on a new idea and thinking that Walk in My Shoes was behind her. At the time, she was thinking through how to set up a multi-language mental health centre that would ease the process for immigrants to access therapy, as Carla knows immigration is a traumatic experience. When the program started, Carla was juggling her work as a registered clinical counsellor, her family life, and her other priorities while trying to hold space for her brand-new idea to take shape. Then she learned that Walk in My Shoes was to have a second wind: the City of Coquitlam wanted to support her project through the Cultural Display Program and feature the project at City Hall during Celebrate Diversity Month.
After a few discussions about everything that was on her plate, she realised that developing her multi-language mental health centre was a very long-term plan. Walk in My Shoes, on the other hand, having started small, had the opportunity to gain momentum through the activities of Trampoline. Carla could picture herself channelling her energy into creating a more immersive experience for the residents of Coquitlam and for a variety of unique communities — she was curious about how the project could grow, and she decided to make the iterative development of Walk in My Shoes the new focus of her time in Trampoline. She said yes to displaying Walk in My Shoes at City Hall and approached the librarian at the City Centre library about displaying the project there as well. Together, they came up with the idea of displaying the posters and making bookmarks with the QR codes on them available to the public at the City Centre and Poirier library branches.
To deliver on the City Hall and library showcases, Carla worked closely with the municipality’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion department to launch the initiative in the media and promote the exhibits. By the time the program was over, Carla had learned so much about the intricacies of the project: about how the system works and about the appeal of the project to government institutions and different service agencies. She started to see how adapting the stories’ format and style could extend her impact and meet the needs of different audiences while continuing to spark conversation in and around Coquitlam.
“The pilot version of Walk in My Shoes was about the stories of five immigrant women who live in the city, showcased in central locations,” Carla explains. “I am now interested in linking places in the community to stories of people in the community that link to social issues, like stories of special needs, immigration stories, and stories of homelessness. So, I want to work with people who want to talk about those places, telling their stories around those places. Like, when a person is at a certain specific place in the city, let’s say they are going for a walk on the trail by the river, for example, they walk around and listen to these stories about people around that place and make an empathetic connection.”
For her project to be successful, Carla understands that supporting people in telling their stories will be critically important. “I don’t want people just to write these stories and send them in for us to select or not,” she says. “No, I also want people to learn a new skill: storytelling. Because this is healing. I want this work to give voice to vulnerable people. I want listeners to learn something new and experience a sort of cognitive shock through the power of storytelling.”
Following Trampoline, Carla is taking Walk in My Shoes into RADIUS’ Build program to continue developing the next iteration. She’s thinking through the kinds of storytelling supports that will be helpful, identifying meaningful places in the city, deciding how to invite participants to tell their stories, and determining how to display the stories to make them accessible to as many listeners as possible. If you are interested in listening to the stories featured in Walk in My Shoes, you can click here for access to the audio recordings on PodBean.
The Refugee Livelihood Lab is part of a growing movement supporting deep shifts in the systems which govern our lives towards equity, dignity, and sustainability for all people and the planet.
Thank you to our funders Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, and WES Mariam Assefa Fund (MAF).
The post Walk in My Shoes: Spotlight on Carla Carvalho first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>The post She Sparks Impact: A connection and community-building initiative for women founded by Hadil Al-Ashwal first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>She Sparks Impact, a new Vancouver-based initiative, creates spaces for like-minded women to build meaningful connections and learn something new. Through interactive events, many led by local women entrepreneurs, founder Hadil Al-Ashwal hopes to advance gender equality by inspiring a community of empowered women who see the importance of, and are working toward, being more emotionally and financially independent.
Gender equality is an issue close to Hadil’s heart. Born and raised in Yemen and living throughout the Middle East, South-East Asia, and Europe for six years before coming to North America, she expresses, “I’ve seen and experienced many acts of gender discrimination in my life that have played very important roles in building my passion to work on gender equality.”
In fact, She Sparks Impact has its roots in her previous experience with social entrepreneurship in service of gender equality.
In 2021, after working with organisations like Prince’s Trust and Big Brothers Big Sisters, she founded the MENA Advocates for Gender Equality (MENA AGE) initiative while living in the USA and consulting at the World Bank Group. MENA AGE was created to engage and empower women by holding inspiring stories about women and gender equality up to the light, making educational videos, and facilitating training opportunities about issues relevant to women and girls in the Middle East and North Africa.
After two years running MENA AGE, Hadil moved to Vancouver, a notoriously lonely city. By this time, she had lived in eight different places over eight years and was keenly aware of how important — and difficult — it can be to build connections and community as a newcomer. She began to dream about how she might build belonging and bring her work as an advocate for women’s empowerment to Canada. She recalls, “I wanted to make a detour to see how I could do more hours of this work, to see if it could potentially be the only work that I’m doing longer term.” That desire for a detour is what led her to the RADIUS Refugee Livelihood Lab Trampoline program. “Based on the work I had done with MENA AGE, [my experience facilitating and delivering training and professional development sessions], and the learnings I had,” she shares, “I wanted to figure out what changes I needed to make to start something up in Canada that aligns with my work experience.”
Trampoline supported the founding of She Sparks Impact in four profound ways:
Launched in May 2023, She Sparks Impact focuses on building organic connections to enrich the lives and careers of women by convening opportunities for them to engage in personal and professional development activities hosted and facilitated by local service-based female entrepreneurs. By working with these guest entrepreneurs to brainstorm and design their sessions, and then supporting them through the planning, promotion, and delivery of the events, Hadil is supporting female entrepreneurs in honing their skills, understanding their impact, and ensuring they receive the recognition they deserve.
So far, She Sparks Impact has hosted 3 public events this summer and fall. Women Connecting through Art Therapy took place at the end of May at the RADIUS offices, and Women Connecting in the Jungle through Somatic Movement was held at the end of July in Stanley Park. On October 22, branding photographer and entrepreneur Ana Kliri facilitated the Female Entrepreneurs Connecting through Mobile Branding Photography Workshop. These events received rave reviews from attendees and have given Hadil amazing feedback to work with, giving her confidence and allowing her to continue developing her idea as she builds her brand — and her event roster! Future events will be released on Instagram @she.sparks.impact as Hadil builds her network of female entrepreneurs and explores topics recommended by session attendees.
Beginning this fall, She Sparks Impact is hosting a monthly book club, She Sparks Reading Connections, on the last Thursday of every month. As more connector events are developed, Hadil hopes women will join the fun, pick up a book, and make a commitment to connect with like-minded women.
When asked where she would like to take the initiative next, Hadil smiles and shares that she’s really excited to make She Sparks Impact events as inclusive as possible. “I am trying to think about how I could support more underrepresented people through this process, and at the same time, make sure that we’re being inclusive and as beneficial as possible,” she says, “so I’m really hoping to promote and amplify entrepreneurs, trainers, and presenters who are mostly immigrants and hopefully newcomers that have specific skills they can share with a broad group of women who attend the events.” Reflecting on the work ahead of her, Hadil shares that she will know She Sparks Impact is, well, sparking impact, when she “sees meaningful personal and professional connections built amongst the community of women attending and facilitating the events.” She imagines expanding the reach of She Sparks Impact across Canada to create impact at scale through these connections and to empower a broad network of women. “I believe that together,” she says, “we can spark change, one connection at a time.”
If you want to follow She Sparks Impact, participate in events, or help support this new initiative, connect with Hadil on Instagram at @she.sparks.impact or by email at shesparksimpact@gmail.com.
The Refugee Livelihood Lab is part of a growing movement supporting deep shifts in the systems which govern our lives towards equity, dignity, and sustainability for all people and the planet.
Thank you to our funders Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, and WES Mariam Assefa Fund (MAF).
The post She Sparks Impact: A connection and community-building initiative for women founded by Hadil Al-Ashwal first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>The post Meet the Pod Members of BUILD: Growing Initiatives for Impact & Solidarity! first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>“What shape is your body making right now, and how has that been influenced by choices that are made for you?”
“How might we nurture a community of belonging for folks arriving as refugee claimants to Canada?”
“Wouldn’t it be cool to hear the stories of some of the people who also walk down this park pathway?”
“How do you walk the talk of “creating trauma-informed, equitable, inclusive group cultures”?”
“How might we effectively use creative services like videography, photography, and motion graphics to showcase and highlight Black excellence?”
These are some of the questions that the pod members of this first-ever iteration of the BUILD Program are asking and answering in their work.
Over six months in 2023, the people of BUILD* have been expanding our strategic and tactical emotional, intellectual, and relational capacities while prioritizing rest and imagination in the process.
Along with invited knowledge keepers and subject-matter experts, we engage in learning guided by Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) Indigenous worldview** and consider concepts including economic reconciliation, financial foundations, strategic frameworks, and values-based storytelling and marketing.
Meet the thirteen incredible people who have chosen to trust the program team in co-creating this emerging and imaginative program at RADIUS. We celebrate them all as they deepen their learning and expand their skills in service of their systems-shifting work.
*Inclusive of the BUILD Pod members and program team as a deliberate choice to blur the lines between “service provider/expert” and “participant/learner.” This gestures toward dismantling supremacist notions and stepping into shared power, mutual support, and collective action.
** Raised hands in gratitude particularly to Sxwpilemaát Siyám (Chief Leanne Joe) for starting our program in a good way, and to Charlene Williams for generously sharing presence and teachings from Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation).
Program note: The conventional professional and academic practice of introducing oneself and one’s work in the form of a written bio has its strengths and limitations. Many of us in the BUILD Program are trained in a variety of cultural contexts that typically practice different forms to foster connection. This is often in the oral tradition, highlighting relations, context, and inviting dialogue; the written form then serves as a supplement.
In our distributed and digital context, we lead with voice and keep the text intentionally brief. Please consider these as the mere glimpses that they are into thirteen multifaceted lives and bodies of work. We hope there is just enough here to spark genuine, respectful, reciprocal connections.
(Listed in alphabetical order by first name.)
About the Person:
Anati is a university student studying media and one of the co-founders of the multimedia company DDB Media. She is excited to learn more about elevating her brand.
About the Work:
Daily Dose of Blackness Media Co-op
A multimedia cooperative comprised of young Black creatives, working to highlight and showcase Black and BIPOC stories through videography, photography and motion graphics services. Currently focused in “Surrey, BC”, this connects to the larger vision of inspiring other youth to foster a community of creatives.
About the Person:
Aslam is a 4th-generation South African Indian living on unceded Coast Salish lands. In his words: “Growing up Muslim in South Africa has brought me the gifts of an acute power awareness, spiritual grounding and a love for bringing people together.”
About the Work:
Waterline Co-op is a group of experienced facilitators who hold space for teams in conflict, and train other facilitators and leaders to develop their conflict and leadership skills. Using tools and frameworks from Deep Democracy, Process Work and other modalities help to create trauma-informed, equitable, and inclusive group cultures. Is your group dealing with some challenging team dynamics? Our consulting services can help!
About the Person:
Carla is a feminist, proud mom, wife, and an activist. She is also a clinical counsellor and a member of the Immigrant Advisory Table of the Tri-cities Local Immigrant Partnership (TCLIP).
About the Work:
A unique place-based community storytelling experience that bridges analog relations through digitally mediated story-points, centred around the area known as Coquitlam (kʷikʷəƛ̓əm).
About the Person:
Husain is a mental health clinician that works in both private and public spaces. His public work involves therapy with comorbid addictions. Husain is privately Registered as a Clinical Counselor (RCC) and is a co-founder of Marula Counselling.
About the Work:
Currently building an exploratory community initiative, in collaboration with Marula Counselling, that seeks to explore the various gaps in adult mental health care through qualitative frameworks. Through data collection and program development, this project seeks to build better supports for long-term advocacy, outreach and adult mental health care.
By centering deep collaborative learning, this project aims to ultimately increase the overall available inventory of mental health services inside the Lower Mainland Region for both service providers and participants.
About the Person:
Imrahn is a Class Actions Lawyer, with a specialization in Indigenous Law. He co-founded a project which provides affordable, easily-understandable legal services to traditionally marginalized Canadians.
About the Work:
A digital legal service platform designed to increase access to vetted legal information for migrant communities, by translating dense English-based “legalese” procedures and jargon into user-serving tools and resources.
About the Person:
Kian Cham is a movement coach, martial artist and pole dancer who happens to be transgender. For him, movement is an opportunity to train a deeper internal self in alignment with our expanding capacity to externally express. Kian collaborates with clients to create holistic movement practices defined by their true values beyond mainstream ‘fitness’ standards.
About the Work:
Beginning by learning about our unique postures, Centre of Gravity creates holistic movement programs to enhance strength, mobility and responsiveness that is enduring. Centre of Gravity addresses whole body wellness to improve everyday mobility, relieve pain, and grow into physical fitness aspirations we truly value.
About the Person:
Lulu is one of the co-founders of The Cleaning Co-op. She is eager to expand her skills and apply the knowledge from the program to the growing success of the co-op and its members.
About the Work:
An uncompromising ethical cleaning company providing their worker-owners with equitable and empowering living-wage work opportunities. Founded from lived experiences of exploitation, discrimination, patriarchy, and capitalism, the co-founders decided to create better opportunities for themselves and their communities.
About the Person:
Mayra is a social entrepreneur, founder of Resilient Care & Student Counsellor. Her work supports BIPOC international students by inviting the exploration of their unique stories in a compassionate space.
About the Work:
A Group Narrative Therapy program that serves international students pursuing post-secondary education to transform survival stories into resilience narratives.
About the Person:
“I am Palestinian as you can tell.” Mohammed is a Co Founder and Director of LightWork JEDDI Consulting Cooperative. He is passionate about advocating for Refugee Claimants’ belonging and financial mobility.
About the Work:
A consulting cooperative that holds compassionate and competent un/learning spaces for people and organizations focused on fostering justice and belonging through safer, inclusive, and more diverse work environments.
About the Person:
Paulina is a Co-founder of The Cleaning Co-op. A nurse by profession, Paulina is passionate about learning and new projects.
About the Work:
An uncompromising ethical cleaning company providing their worker-owners with equitable and empowering living-wage work opportunities. Founded from lived experiences of exploitation, discrimination, patriarchy, and capitalism, the co-founders decided to create better opportunities for themselves and their communities.
About the Person:
Rubina has wide and varied career experience in film/television, ecommerce and HR operations. A seemingly odd mashup of skills and experience has led her to her true passion – building a social enterprise that creates a ripple effect of awareness, support and engagement for refugee women.
About the Work:
Project Massar is a social enterprise seeking to create equitable work opportunities for Muslim refugee women. Through the sale of handmade artisan products like prayer beads or tasbeehs made from semi-precious stones, Rubina hopes to destigmatize the refugee label while driving awareness to increase support.
About the Person:
Saliema is a student majoring in communications at Douglas College. She is the co-founder of the multimedia company DDB Media. Saliema’s main role in DDB Media is photography and videography.
About the Work:
Daily Dose of Blackness Media Co-op
A multimedia cooperative comprised of young Black creatives, working to highlight and showcase Black and BIPOC stories through videography, photography and motion graphics services. Currently focused in “Surrey, BC”, this connects to the larger vision of inspiring other youth to foster a community of creatives.
About the Person:
Siu Yin is an analytics-focused professional with a strong desire to promote wellness locally and internationally through physical education, sports, and physical recreation. With more than 20 years of professional experience in higher education, Siu Yin brings considerable skills and insights to this work.
About the Work:
Wellness for Migrants
A comprehensive holistic group wellness program that keeps recent migrants fit, relieves stress, and boosts confidence. Slogan: “Move! Be Happy and Healthy.”
BUILD is funded by the Government of Canada’s Future Skills Centre. Le projet BUILD est financé par le Centre des Compétences futures du gouvernement du Canada; Definity Insurance Foundation; Community Foundations of Canada; Gore Mutual; Vancouver Foundation; RBC Foundation; Health Sciences Association; BCAA; and SFU’s Community Engagement Initiative.
The post Meet the Pod Members of BUILD: Growing Initiatives for Impact & Solidarity! first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>The post Health Equity in the World of Social Innovation: The People and Stories from the Health Promotion Lab first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
]]>In addition to launching our health equity leadership program, Reimagine Health, we’ve worked alongside and supported the work of community interventions and health equity innovators looking to play a role in transforming health systems in Canada.
Throughout this time, our understanding of the term “equity,” specifically within the health landscape in Metro Vancouver, has shifted and evolved as a result of our personal experiences, the time we spend in and with diverse communities, and our exploration of how to centre equity in our work and programming. One of the grounding ways we come to understand and work towards health equity is by working with changemakers, community organisers, and social innovators from communities disproportionately impacted by health inequities who are looking to make an impact within their communities.
We chatted with some of our Reimagine Health alums to see how they understand health equity and how it shows up in their work and within the social innovation landscape.
“It means infusing practices such as Indigenous and Eastern approaches in how we unravel and understand the complexities of our world. There is a lot of deep-rooted knowledge in Western medicine, but that knowledge also exists beyond it. Health equity is an opportunity to balance what works because everyone’s needs are so diverse, but the system is so rigid, e.g. through funding deadlines, diagnoses, resources, etc. It means a willingness to stretch.”
-Halah Zumrawi
Through their own experiences of navigating the health care system as Muslim women, Halah, Lina, and Osob formed a collective during their time in Reimagine Health to begin an equity-centred project with one initial goal in mind: identifying barriers to mental health care within the diverse Muslim communities in Metro Vancouver. They used the Equity Centred Design framework to ground their ideas in community and incorporate diverse perspectives throughout their journey, recognising that the necessary expertise lies within the community they hope to serve.
The journey for this team began with a deep exploration of how the Metro Vancouver Muslim community understands mental health and what barriers exist to accessing mental health care and support. They developed and distributed surveys to their community and received 200 responses, showcasing the need and desire to hold space for topics like these. Through the survey, three key barriers emerged: financial barriers, lack of culturally and religiously competent care, and a lack of comfort on an individual level to share mental health struggles within the current framework of care. This process led to forming the Muslim Mental Health Professional Database, which currently in its early prototyping stage.
“The innovation in my initiative and how I position my work in this space is in definitions. It’s in how I’m looking at well-being and health overall. Across humanity, there’s always been a way to look at well-being, which at times may be a collective understanding, but it changes over time and we’re seeing a shift that now is more explorative and critical. For a long time, it’s been centred on physical health and staying active…but is that the only way we can experience living and experience well-being? For me, it comes down to humanity and how we show up for each other and ourselves. When I see people investing in their emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical health and other realms of life, and when I hear people saying that they are thriving and not just surviving—this is what I’m hoping to contribute to in society through my initiative and my understanding of well-being.
-Dania Al-Alusi
Touches of Humanity is a social enterprise that promotes well-being through psychoeducational and community-based initiatives supporting children’s emotional development. Dania wants to work with organisations to co-create resources drawing upon different forms of wisdom to understand how various systems impact well-being, both in ways that help us thrive but also in ways that hinder growth.
“Health equity is the process by which folks can successfully access the tools and resources necessary to influence their individual and community health in a helpful and positive way. The clearest way in which health equity shows up in my work is when health care advocacy has been successful. An example of health care advocacy is the de-stigmatisation of the mental health conversation, where conversations about mental health are starting to become ‘dinner table’ accessible versus five years ago where talking about mental health was filled with barriers. Organisations and community members who regularly advocated for increased mental health services, in formal and informal conversation, used their voices to shift the cultural zeitgeist, allowing increased de-stigmatisation and reducing the barriers to building better service provision.”
-Husain Vahanvaty
Through exploratory initiatives and direct counselling care, Marula Counselling seeks to bridge the gaps in mental health care. Marula’s primary goals are to support community health, build tools and resources for advocacy and equity, and provide practical support for those who need to navigate community mental health resources.
An alum of RADIUS’ Reimagine Health program, Husain brought his passion and expertise in mental health equity and advocacy into the space while exploring the Equity-Centred Design framework. Currently, Husain is continuing his journey within the health equity innovation landscape by participating in the BUILD program at RADIUS, a new program from the Equity-Centred Accelerator that elevates and centres the ideas and priorities of Indigenous, Black, and racialized folks leading transformative social, economic, or environmental systems change initiatives with and for their communities.
This work would not be possible without the support from our incredible funder Definity Insurance Foundation.
The post Health Equity in the World of Social Innovation: The People and Stories from the Health Promotion Lab first appeared on RADIUS SFU.
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