Dec 11 | Daring to LEAP: the Art of Building Community and Collective Voice
December 7, 2008
Vancouver Status of Women is excited to invite you to:
Daring to LEAP: The Art of Building Community and Collective Voice
Thursday, 11 December 2008
6:00 – 9:00pm
Hastings Community Centre (Room 9)
3096 East Hastings St.
Vancouver – Coast Salish Territory
A FREE panel on the roles and experiences of community educators in our struggles for liberation AND introducing VSW’s new multi-year project: the Leadership Empowerment Activism Program (LEAP)
Refreshments and bus tickets are provided.
Please RSVP for child care and indicate the age and number of child(ren) attending.
We welcome all women-identified folks and especially encourage Indigenous women and women of colour to attend. If you need additional arrangements to access this event, please get in touch with LEAP (see contact info below).
Speakers include:
Benita Bunjun
Benita has been a community consultant and facilitator for the past 7 years for social justice organizations. She has also been active in women’s and social justice movements for the last 10 years at the local, provincial and national levels. She is the past President of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women and past Project Coordinator at VSW. Currently, Benita is serving as a Coordinating Collective member of VSW.
Rain Daniels
Rain is a mixed heritage Indigenous woman who brings over 17 years of experience of front line work experience with both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities. In the last 6 years, Rain has focused on educational workshops, facilitation training and community development.
Adriana Paz
Adriana has over 9 years of experience working on social justice issues with a wide range of grassroots movements, particularly with indigenous women in Bolivia . She has been a community radio broadcaster, columnist for Bolivian newspapers and magazines, popular educator and social researcher on (im)migrant issues. In Canada , she is an organizer with Justicia for Migrant Workers BC and a founding member of the Canada-Bolivia Solidarity Committee.
Priti Shah
Priti is a community-based activist, social justice advocate and anti-racism trainer/facilitator. Since 1988, she has actively advocated on behalf of immigrant women and professionals for equal employment status and international credential recognition in Canada . She is an advisory committee member for the Interfaith Summer Institute and currently the Living Wage Campaign organizer for the Hospital Employees Union.
With poetry readings by:
Cecily Nicholson & Proma Tagore
Daring to LEAP offers an opportunity for us to examine together the possibilities presented by community facilitation and popular education rooted in radically anti-racist and anti-colonial feminist practice to build community and collective voice. Some of the questions that panellists and participants will explore together include:
* What do we need to do to create radically inclusive and transformative communities?
* How do we practice collectivity and value every voice equally?
* How do our herstories of struggle and our social positions inform our work and our vision?
* Why is it so important that indigenous women and women of colour be at forefront of community facilitation and popular education work?
In addition, we will be introducing the LEAP project and inviting the community to offer their ideas and aspirations for this program. Starting in 2009, LEAP will be offering a workshop series in anti-oppression theory and practice, workshop design, and community facilitation. LEAP will also support participants in delivering workshops to diverse communities.
If you are a woman-identified community facilitator, popular educator and/or community organizer who may be interested in being part of the LEAP Advisory Committee, or if you are a young woman who has experienced systemic racism, colonialism and other forms of oppression and is interested in becoming a LEAP participant, please do not hesitate to get in touch!
If you can, please RSVP so we can have a better idea how many people to expect and make sure we have enough food and bus tickets.
For more information or to RSVP, please contact:
Cynthia Oka, LEAP Coordinator
604-255-6554
leapcoordinator@vsw.ca
