Walking With Newcomers: Opportunities for Innovation in Settlement Programming
Tanya Chute Molina, Executive Director, Mennonite New Life Centre
There is a proverb – of disputed origins – which says “May you live in interesting times.”
We are living in interesting times in the settlement sector – times of opportunity and of challenge.
Times of opportunity because the visible minority is fast becoming the majority. Because there is growing recognition that effective settlement and integration programs are critical to the future of a country that depends on immigration to grow – or even to maintain - its population and labour force. Because increasingly, public institutions are joining community based settlement organizations in the effort to support newcomers to succeed. Because Local Immigration Partnerships are giving diverse stakeholders a forum in which to talk about how we do this work more effectively together.
Funding realities also make these times of opportunity. Over the last five years, we have seen unprecedented investment in the sector due to the Canada Ontario Immigration Agreement (COIA). We have seen settlement organizations emerge from survival mode to grow and to innovate. We have seen the emergence of the Modernized Settlement Framework to encourage creativity and a focus on real outcomes for newcomers. This framework acknowledges that our role goes beyond information and referral, that it is about giving newcomers the tools to participate fully in the labour market and the wider community.
But we also live in times of challenge. Poverty continues to grow in racialized communities. Statistics tell us that newcomers are taking longer than ever before to “catch up” to the Canadian born population. We know the stories – the classic story of the internationally trained doctor driving a taxi, and the many more we hear on a daily basis – the newcomer journalist struggling to transition from the ethnic press into the mainstream – the factory worker laid off during the recession – women and men struggling to make ends meet.
And then there are the stories we don’t hear enough, because we’re not funded or insufficiently funded to listen to them. Stories of refugee claimants – frightened that their country of origin will suddenly be designated “safe” and their suffering and fear discredited. Stories of foreign temporary workers – growing our food, building our homes, cleaning our hotels – working long hours for low pay and going underground when the promised work dries up. Foreign temporary workers are becoming a larger and larger percentage of yearly arrivals, playing a major role in labour market recruitment, particularly for low skill, low pay work. In 2008, there were 134 000 people admitted under employment authorizations, compared to 43 000 skilled workers.
There is a fundamental disconnect between an immigration policy that is bringing people in as disposable workers, and a settlement policy that targets meaningful integration. The only way to bring the two together is to exclude a growing proportion of newcomers from access to services. From the point of view of the settlement agency, the school or the library, this is an unacceptable solution. We serve whole communities and answer to whole communities.
We live in interesting times indeed. So how do we, as settlement organizations and settlement workers, act on opportunities and respond to challenges. I would suggest that we begin by being clear about our our mission and our accountability. For OCASI, our mission is to achieve equality, access and full participation for immigrants and refugees in every aspect of Canadian life. It follows that we are ultimately accountable to those same immigrants and refugees – the only ones who can tell us whether we are really making a meaningful difference in their lives and communities. Yes, we are accountable to funders for what we do with the money they give us, but we do not work for any one individual funder. We work for the community and seek out the resources we need to accomplish our mission.
I’d like to tell you a story. The author of this story – in more ways than one – is Eva Saphir. Eva is a clinical therapist, originally from Argentina, with many years of experience in community and hospital settings in Canada. About three years ago, the Mennonite New Life Centre approached Eva to ask for her help in building a community mental health program. We saw an unmet need – many of our clients were struggling with different kinds of stress and trauma – everything from post traumatic stress associated with persecution in their home country to depression resulting from the difficulties of adapting and finding work in Canada. Meanwhile, there were very few organizations offering counselling in Spanish and most of them had wait lists of six months or more. Looking at the same newcomer community, we also saw an untapped resource – two internationally trained psychologists had agreed to volunteer their time as peer counsellors.
We wanted to ensure quality of service – and quality of volunteer support - by offering clinical supervision and professional mentoring to the volunteer psychologists. Eva stepped in to fill the gap and began to meet regularly with a team of two, then four, then ten internationally trained psychologists, offering support, encouragement and a sense of humour. She helped these internationally trained clinicians believe in themselves when no one else did, when their credentials went unrecognized and their resumes unanswered. She helped them support fellow newcomers to overcome the anxiety of an upcoming refugee hearing, make the difficult decision to leave an abusive relationship, find hope and wholeness in their new life in Canada.
As the program grew, we began to see more clearly the needs of internationally trained professionals. They needed more than just a volunteer opportunity, so we began to look for more effective ways to create a bridge to employment. The first step was to establish an internship program. Our first two internships were for 8 hours/week for six months – this was all the money we raised with our fundraising campaign – but it was better than nothing. Leticia and Marisabel, gifted clinicians from Cuba and Venezuela, gave much more than their paid hours as they divided their time between individual counselling and and facilitating an empowerment group process that sought to affirm strengths and build community leadership.
Today, with support from new funders, we offer three part time internships for internationally trained psychologists and offer counselling to many newcomers every month. A participatory action research project has helped us to articulate a policy brief recommending increased internship opportunities for internationally trained professionals as an effective bridge to employment. And funding from the provincial government has opened up the opportunity to develop a formal bridge training program for internationally trained psychologists and allied mental health professionals. Beginning in September, we will offer a comprehensive program of academic bridge training, occupation specific language classes and a supervised clinical placement.
This is a story of acting on opportunities and responding to challenges. Eva is now in the process of writing a training manual for other mentors. She tells the story this way –
“Once upon a time there was a need, some people saw this need and invented a way to start meeting it. With fits and starts, trials and errors, it took a shape and as it developed, other needs were noticed, like opening a door into a room that has several other doors to open and each door leads to another room with other doors. Some people might have gotten frustrated believing that this task was never going to finish, but the people in this story got excited because they saw one opportunity after another to grow, learn and have an impact. It was not a job, it was a passion.”
The house of settlement is a big one. Rooms open into rooms, which open into more rooms. We can stay on the doorstep of information and referral, or the front hallway of language instruction, or we can continue to go deeper into that house until all of us can truly call Canada our Home. The Modernized Settlement Framework offers new doorways. Doorways called Labour Market Access, and Welcoming Communities can bring us into new rooms - new programs to support immigrants and refugees to participate fully in the labour market and the wider community. Other doorways have yet to be crossed to respond to unmet community needs or to ensure that all who knock are welcome in the house of settlement, regardless of immigration status. It’s not just about a job. It’s a passion.
You may be in a leadership role – assessing the opportunities and challenges of our times, designing programs, writing grant proposals. Or you may be on the front lines of settlement work and language teaching - directly supporting newcomers in assessing the opportunities and challenges that face them. All of us have doors, rooms, choices – how far will we go – how deep will we enter.
One of the most important choices we have to make is how far will we go in partnering with newcomers and newcomer communities. Settlement and integration is not just about newcomers adapting to the mainstream. It’s about newcomers contributing their voice and their skills, transforming our programs, our labour market and our society into something new – something richer and more inclusive, something better because it allows all of us to contribute our best.
Doors like participant driven programs, participatory research, community engagement and policy dialogue can help to bring us deeper into partnership with newcomer communities. Doors like participatory evaluation and planning, or newcomer participation on committees and boards of directors, remind us that newcomers are not simply guests but members of the household.
Whether we are directors, managers, program coordinators, settlement workers, language teachers, childminders, or whatever else your title might be, our mission – and our passion - is to achieve equality, access and full participation for immigrants and refugees in every aspect of Canadian life. That mission - and that passion - requires us to act on opportunities and to respond to challenges, to enter into new rooms and deeper partnership with newcomers. I trust that this conference gives you a chance to take a break from your day to day activities, to reflect on our shared mission, to learn and share ideas, and explore new ways to walk alongside newcomers in interesting times.
Thank you and have a great conference!
