Check out our most recent annual newsletter to learn about Finding Home highlights in 2009: January 2010
Check out our most recent monthly e-newsletter: January E-news 2010 about Art, Dialogue and Cross-Cultural Communication
Featured Posts
Recently, Finding Home facilitated a series of dialogues with Mandarin-speaking grandparents who are also caregivers during the day for their grandchildren. The dialogues were hosted by Kitsilano Neighbourhood House and funded by New Horizaons for Seniors Programs. During the dialogues the grandparents agreed that Mah-jong creates a sense of home for them. In China, they explained, everyone plays games together. If they could only have a place to play Mah-jong here in Canada, then they would finally feel at home.
The dialogue series consisted of three ...... read more
Kitsilano Neighbourhood House(KNH) contracted Finding Home to build capacity within their staff through proving our Community Engagement and Asset Mapping training with the goal to deliver seniors and elders asset mapping workshops throughout the West Side of Vancouver and produce a resource guide. By engaging over 100 seniors and elders from diverse backgrounds, including Musqueam Elders and Newcomer seniors, this project produced the West Side Seniors & Elders Resource Guide. The launch of the guide brought together seniors and elders, seniors service providers ...... read more
The ways in which we respond to personal, community and global challenges are rapidly changing. Whether it is loss of language; a lack of affordable housing; displacement through war or flood; or fundamental institutional changes, many people from across cultures and sectors are yearning for belonging, connection and safety or a sense of home.
We are certainly in a time of transition and change. Some conceptualize our current situation as being within humanity’s cyclical patterns. For example, Arnold Toynbee argued that, prior to the rise of a new era, violence increases and people tended to respond to stress, conflict, and change with less creativity and more rigidity. In addition, peo ...... read more
I was invited to give key the keynote address at Alberta’s provincial restorative justice conference “Fostering A Restorative Worldview.” As part of my preparation, I researched the origins of each “restorative” and “worldview.” I first drew from my research in Worldview Skills and started with the root of the word ‘worldview’ which comes from the German word “weltanschauung” and means “a comprehensive conception or image of the universe and humanity’s relationship to it.” This understanding of ...... read more
Today, seniors from Seniors Services Society shared stories about what creates a sense of home for them. One senior said, “home is where you live with the love of your life.” Another senior responded, “that may be so for you…I sure did not have a husband like that!” While experiences of home differed, all agreed “the smell of mom’s cooking creates a sense of home for all of us.”
Frieda Hogg explained, “the worst thing about getting older isn’t that you lose your eyesight, it is that because of this loss of sight, you can’t read mom’s recipes.” As the dialogue series progressed, these seniors identifie ...... read more
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Alexandra Neighbourhood House hosted a Finding Home Newcomers Dialogue in South Surrey, White Rock. 40 Newcomers from Chinese and Korean origins attended. Dialogue participants shared stories about moving to Canada, finding work, learning English, trying to access services and workplace problems. Despite the myriad of hurdles they all overcame to find home in Canada, all agreed the most important priority is to make friends, they rest they say will take care of itself.
40 Newcomers gather for Finding Home Dialogue in Crescent Beach
Posted on November 21st, 2009 in Uncategorized. Tags: Community Engagement, Cross-Cultural, Dialogue, Finding Home, Newcomers
Alexandra Neighbourhood House Newcomers and long time residents alike are working together to welcome recent newcomers. In preparation for a multicultural dialogue to be held on November 21st, 2009, Alexandra Neighbourhood House hosted Finding Home’s Community Engagement workshops. Seniors, ESL youth and long time residents of all ages gathered to share experiences and learn new tools to engage newcomer communities in a dialogue. It was decided that the dialogue would be called a “Tea and Chat” and the motto they created is “Today you come here by yourself. Tommorrow you come here with friends.”
Tonight Alexandra Neighbourhood House launched their Building Welcoming and Inclusive Communities (BWIC) strategy by hosting a community dinner and a Finding Home presentation and dialogue. Over 30 people participated, including youth, seniors, newcomers, long time residents, service providers, artists and community organizers. Many ideas were generated and a new BWIN advisory group was formed. I look forward to continuing to work with this dynamic community. In October, I will be giving a community engagement workshop to their BWIN advisory group and youth group. In November I will facilitate a Finding Home Multicultural Dialogue for Newcomers in Crescent Beach South Surrey. Read more…
Gordon Neighbourhood House is having three professional development half days to receive Finding Home’s community engagement and diversity training. Today was the first module called “Home Matters.” . In this training, participants explore multiple meanings of home, factors that foster and erode a sense of belonging and identify the attitudes and behaviours that lead to building inclusive communities. At the end of today’s session, the team committed to de-cluttering their offices, a neighbourhood house wide Spring Cleaning and making their own work spaces more “homey.”
