More on the forum in Calgary
I posted on my blog about the conference, and got some interesting feedback from people, not all of whom attended the Forum.
Category : Blogroll
Tags: calgary, canadian social forum, Poverty
Canadian Social Forum 2009
We’re blogging LIVE from the Canadian Social Forum! Here, community leaders from social development, public health, environment, community safety and recreation are brought together. The Forum targets poverty – both urban and rural. Workshops by aboriginal presenters doing innovative work across the country will play a critical role.Where are the people who are living in poverty??
Good morning,
As I sit in the McLeod room at this Canadian Social Forum I keep searching for the people who this forum affects the most and I cannot see them.
I am a Social Worker and have worked and lived with and in poverty. I am fortunate to have overcome the barriers in our society to live a comfortable life but I am very aware of the poverty in my province of Alberta. I am embarassed to say I am Albertan some days because of our wealth and poverty. It doesn’t even make sense that I live in one of the richest provinces in one of the richest countries in the world and yet there are still Albertans/Canadians who are living in a “fourth world country”.
I am a Metis woman from Alberta and have watched the First Nations, Metis, and Inuit (FNMI) people live in horrible conditions much like people in the third world. As one person commented at this Forum the FNMI people do not seem to be appropriately represented within this conversation we are having over the four days of the forum. As some of you may know, the FNMI population has an alarmingly high percentage of people living in poverty.
I would like to make a suggestion for the next forum to have a panel of people who are living in poverty speak so those of us who are doing the work can hear their voices and listen actively to make changes that are meaningful in their lives.
I have also heard discussion around having the politicians and policy makers at this forum so they would hopefully feel some empathy for the poor. This would be a step in the right direction but we need to go one step further and have them hear from the people in poverty not just people in “suits”.
Athena McKenzie Lothian
Category : Uncategorized
Digital Storytelling
Tansi,
I have been attending this conference as a presenter as well as a participant. My research partner, Yvonne Poitras Pratt and I have been working in the Alberta Metis community discussing Digital Storytelling as a means of healing through embracing being Metis in today’s society.We are both Metis women and have strong ties to Metis communities in Alberta. My family originates from Lac Ste Anne, Alberta and Yvonne’s family is from Fishing Lake Metis Settlement.
I work for the Metis Nation of Alberta revitalizing the language of the Metis which is called Michif. Through digital storytelling I hope to engage the Metis people in a discussion of which Michif dialect/language is most used or was used in Alberta. I believe through language we learn about our beautiful culture which brings a pride that was lost after the Riel Resistance. With digital storytelling we hope to give the Metis people in Alberta a voice that has been silenced since 1885.
The use of new media forms such as digital storytelling allows us to combine ancestral ways of knowing with a powerful way to communicate across cultural boundaries.
Athena McKenzie Lothian
Category : Uncategorized
Tags: digital storytelling
Hoops, Mazes, and Barriers
Michael Creek, Richard Shillington, Sunny Soleil, Tonika Morgan
Poverty is a constant state of humiliation - not news, but imparted to us through compelling testimony by Michael Creek, Sunny Soleil, and Tonika Morgan, on a panel moderated by Richard Shillington. These poverty survivors and advocates tell us about poverty in ways that hit home more than academic analyses and reports. A good reminder about what makes an impact. Later in the day, we see an extraordinary example of powerful advocacy when Cindy Blackstock talks about the Attawapiskat school and the young people there who have initiated a Youtube campaign for a safe school. They are incredibly inspiring, as is Ms. Blackstock. Find their work at www.attawapiskat-school.com/Home.html or fncaringsociety.com.
Category : Uncategorized
Poor No More
Last night I attended the Premiere screening of Poor No More here, at the CSF, to a packed audience. A film about the working poor in Canada and how the crisis in this country compares to other countries– namely Ireland and Sweedan.
The main attraction to this film? I’d like to say it was the issues that this film seeks to present but a big part of the pull to attend this screening was to see and hear Mary Walsh, yes, from This Hour Has 22 Minutes, who narrates the film. For those of you that were not aware, Mary is not just a talented comedian and writer but also a devoted activist who is not shy to speak her mind!
Although this was announced as a Premiere, it was really a rough cut and the producers (including Mary) were looking for feedback from the audience to shape the final version. What a fabulous place to seek a reaction! Attendees of the Forum were not shy to speak their mind–offering much praise and constructive criticism such as wanting to see a Quebec perspective, more intimate stories, more global inquiries into the issues raised and so much more…
Where will this doc be seen? The producers stress that community screenings, church basement style environments are where it will make it’s most frequent appearance.
If you would like to host a screening let them know. They would love to hear from you!
Category : Uncategorized
The Power of Social Media
Really pleased with how our session went today. Well, mostly pleased. We had a good turnout… with a wide variety of folks interested in Social Media, as well as in our co-presenters from the Métis Digital Broadband project… great to engage in a lively discussion, with good questions and participation.
But actually, we probably shouldn’t have been put together into the same workshop with the Métis digital storytelling project, as each of us had more than enough material to fill our own sessions…
But that’s ok, we somehow made it work, and i am really grateful for the opportunity to have met Yvonne and Athena. Two wonderful women with a fabulous project… wishing them much success with it…
But back to the social media thing, as promised, here is a link to our presentation PowerPoint.
http://citizen.nfb.ca/power-social-media-ppt-canadian-social-forum
As i mentioned, please do feel free to contact Colleen or myself if you’d like more information. We’d be happy to follow up.
citizen at nfb dot ca
Category : Uncategorized
Advocates in Calgary
PovNet is an online advocacy network, based in British Columbia but with links all over the country. Coming here to Calgary is a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with the warm bodies behind some of the online voices of anti-poverty advocates in BC, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, and Ontario (and I haven’t touched base with everyone yet).
I’m off to a workshop on digital story telling tomorrow morning, and hopefully will be able to show off BC advocates who now have a digital story online.
Category : Uncategorized
wifi at the Telus centre
We were incredulous when we learned that there would be no wifi signal at the Telus convention centre. Yes, the TELUS centre, no wifi. This would be a huge inconvenience for our ‘live blogging’ efforts, but we were assured by the forum organizers that there would be a plug-in connection for us at a centrally located station. Phil Ecclestone, who did an amazing job as the forum tech and logistics coordinator, looked pained as he apologized to us, explaining that they really tried, but that wifi simply wasn’t available, even for a price.
At the opening session, i pulled out my laptop to take notes. (shocked to see that i was one of the very few laptop users at the conference, a surprise for me, as i’m so used to being at events where the majority of participants are madly typing into some sort of electronic gizmo or another, a sobering reminder that this gathering is of quite a different demographic than i’m used to, and most people were taking notes with pen and paper)
Well, wouldn’t you know, but my little ol’ mac picks up very healthy wifi signal, apparently coming from the Telus centre, just seemed like i needed a password.
I immediately marched myself up to the centre’s administration offices and asked if i could get a password, quite ready to pay for it, of course. But i was told that the connection was not yet ‘ready’ and they couldn’t give me access. What?! Why not? i insisted, pointing out how this seemed very unusual for a modern day convention centre. They just said that it wasn’t ready to be hooked up.
As i turned to leave I calmly mentioned that ‘i couldn’t wait to blog about this on my first blog post ‘live from the forum’.
When i got back downstairs to the forum main rooms, i noticed that a few people were happily working on laptops. Then Colleen mentioned to me that she suddenly got wifi access… i tried it too and sure enough… there it was, and for free.
Hah! Our session is entitled ‘the Power of Social Media’ and here was a perfect example. The very threat of blogging the wifi situation was enough to get Telus to change it. The power of the blog post is now known and of course, nobody wants bad press.
Thank you Telus Centre, this will be a huge help to our participation at the forum… as well as for all the other folks attending with connective devices.
Category : Uncategorized
ACT Now 4 Change
Canadian Social Forum Opening Reception
Calgary is cold on May 19th. It’s supposed to get warmer over the next few days, as anti-poverty activists gather here for the Canadian Social Forum to share ideas about how to address the conundrum of poverty in our rich nation. We all hope that the Forum will be a place where great ideas spread and new ideas foment, and that one day we can trace back significant changes for people living in poverty to these chilly days in one of the most well-to-do cities in our country.
I’m the Founding Director of the Global Advocacy and Leadership Initiative (GALI), an organization we are launching in 2009 after 5 years of exciting incubation at the University of Toronto law school. Advocacy is critically important for our democracies, our lives, and leadership. Through GALI, we teach and advise on advocacy on the basis of comprehensive research, including interviews with top advocates from around the world. We are developing a global community and conversation about advocacy and leadership that transcends issue, ideology, and sector.
This week, I’m conducting a workshop on poverty advocacy at the Canadian Social Forum. My co-presenter, Penny Goldsmith, is the Executive Director of PovNet, the innovative online resource centre on poverty in Canada, and the recipient of the inaugural Alan Thomas Fellowship from the Carold Institute. I’m blogging from the Forum for CitizenShift, the NFB website that provides a forum for posting and interaction on social issues, where you’re reading this right now.
The Forum opened last night with some fanfare at the Telus Center. I went out for drinks afterwards with Penny and her fellow British Columbia poverty activist, Vicky. We talked about the new government in BC, and how discouraging the recent election has been for people living in and combatting poverty there. Another reminder of how important the question of how we measure poverty is. Governments too often take steps that will lead to impressive gains in numbers, at the cost of great hardship on the ground. But there are heartening counterexamples in Canada and elsewhere, some of which are being discussed here over the next few days.
Last week, I was in New York, where I thought a great deal about poverty and innovative solutions. I spent time with Paul Tough, a New York based Canadian whose extraordinary book, Whatever It Takes, recounts the story of Geoff Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, a new approach to bringing children out of poverty. Obama has pledged to replicate the Zone in 20 cities across the US, and I’m interested to see what Canadians think about its relevance for our cities and children. I also met Prakash Nair, an architect who ran New York’s School Construction Authority for a decade before leaving to start his own firm, through which he designs and builds a new kind of school, one that takes into account how different children learn. He’s currently working in the Arctic Circle and Saskatchewan, among other places. His work, like the Harlem Children’s Zone, rethinks social services, community, and education, and how they operate together to maintain the status quo, or, ideally, to transform our lives and society.
The Canadian Council on Social Development has brought to Calgary some of the most important people working on poverty in Canada. Over the next few days, I’ll blog about the innovative ideas I’m hearing here about how to make this country a leader in eradicting poverty and transforming society.
Category : Uncategorized
Tags: canadian social forum, innovation, Poverty
CITIZENShift is heading to Calgary!
From May 19 through the 22nd, we’ll be at the FIRST Canadian Social Forum!
We’re very excited to be attending this event and offering our workshop: The Power of Social Media, which we are co-presenting with our friends, Athena Lothian from the Métis Nation of Alberta and Yvonne Poitras Pratt from the University of Calgary.
Our session is designed to explain and demystify the term “social media” and demonstrate the advantages, ease and fun (!) that interactive Internet practises can offer individuals and organizations. Athena and Yvonne will lead a hands-on Digital Storytelling component of the workshop which CITIZENShift will then host on the site!
The full program for the Forum is currently on the CSF website. It’s going to be hard to chose which workshops to attend as they all look so engaging. And, for that reason, FOLLOW OUR LIVE BLOG, right here throughout the three day event and follow us on Twitter.
It is a great privilege to be collaborating on such a significant Forum–one that seeks to address and find solutions to poverty. I hope you’ll enjoy the reactions and opinions of this event in the blog posts to come. Stay tuned!
Category : Uncategorized
Tags: calgary, canadian social forum, Poverty, social media
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About this blog
We’re blogging LIVE from the Canadian Social Forum! Here, community leaders from social development, public health, environment, community safety and recreation are brought together. The Forum targets poverty – both urban and rural. Workshops by aboriginal presenters doing innovative work across the country will play a critical role.
Blog Authors
Arti PatelArti Patel is a third-year journalism student at Ryerson, specializing in online and television journalism. She enjoys mentoring and exploring different cultures and their lifestyles. Currently she is the volunteer and outreach coordinator at Verse City.
pamPam Shime is the Founding Director of the Global Advocacy & Leadership Initiative (GALI), which is being launched in the summer of 2009 after five years of dynamic incubation at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Through GALI, Pam teaches and advises on advocacy and leadership on the basis of global and cross-disciplinary research, including interviews with top advocates from around the world. Pam received a 2008 U of T Teaching Award for her course, “How to Make Change.”
pennyPenny Goldsmith is the Executive Co-ordinator of PovNet, an online resource for anti-poverty advocates, based in British Columbia. She is currently the recipient of the inaugural Alan Thomas Fellowship from the Carold Institute and is writing a book about PovNet and building online communities.
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