1. Subscription to a daily mainstream national newspaper. I recommend The Globe and Mail and/or the National Post. Both often feature items related to immigration and both are well written and present clear points of view on issues of immigration and settlement.
2. Subscription to a local newspaper. Depending on where the newcomer settles, the local paper offers, often painfully accurately, the local environment: it is important for the newcomer to know where they have landed, how they are welcomed (or not) and avenues for settling, integrating, opportunities for employment and recreation, etc in their chosen community.
3. “100 Photos that Changed Canada” is a beautiful ‘coffee-table’ book that illustrates and documents the journey and history of immigration to Canada. Both heartening and heart-breaking stories and histories are included, everything from the “Girl from Canada”, a living exhibit of a young woman on a bicycle outfitted with all the bells and whistles that ostensibly depicted life in Canada as an incentive to British, to the injustice of the Komagata Maru incident, documenting the history of the “one continuous voyage” policy in immigration policy, to the repatriation of Japanese Canadians after internment during WWII, to Canada’s disgrace in refusing Jewish children’s emigration, 100 Photos is an illustrated history of Canada.
4. Rudyard Griffith’s Who We Are: The Citizen’s Manifesto is a current examination of the state of the nation and the place of the newcomer in it.
5. Shaun Tan’s The Arrival is a beautiful, timeless and ageless picture book that illustrates beautifully the immigrant experience. Children and adults alike will marvel at the empathic depictions of what it is like to land on new shores. Readers will find comfort in this volume, which lovingly and accurately depicts the typical newcomer journey: leaving family, reconciling, being a stranger in a strange land.
6. Library cards to the local public and local university libraries. Many Canadian university libraries offer a “research reader” or “community member” card for non-students. Local public libraries have agreements with Citizenship and Immigration Canada and offer Library Settlement Service programs, a support to newcomers.
This list is reading-heavy: What are your suggestions for other/additional best gifts for newcomers?
Author: marcocampana
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Holiday gifts for newcomers
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Dec 10th is International Human Rights Day
The United Nations website on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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On new shores conference call, Sept 30-Oct 1, 2010
NB: UPDATE Jan 19th: The call for proposals has been extended to March 10th.
The theme for the 4th annual On New Shores, Understanding Immigrant Children is resilience of immigrants and features keynote speaker Dr. Michael Ungar.
From the call: “The goal of the conference is to bring together various stakeholders (academia, community, and government sectors) to collectively examine and discuss issues of stress as well as resilience of immigrant and refugee children, youth and families.
Researchers from various disciplines (e.g., psychology, sociology, social work, education) are welcomed.
Dr. Michaal Ungar, Dalhousie University, social worker and family therapist, is a leading scholar on resiliency and will offer a half researchers. Other scholars from various disciplines will be presenting, including: Marc Bornstein, Bob Bradley, Judith Bernhard, Ruth Chao, Xinyin Chen, David Este, Jo Ann Farver, Cynthia Garcia Coll, Uwe Gielen, Hiro Yoshikawa”.Options for the conference:
Paper Presentation: The presenter will discuss his/her work/program which is empirically-based. The talk will be about 15 – 20 minutes, depending on the number of presenters in each session.
Discussion Hour: Several presenters (preferably well-established) discussing their areas of expertise for 3-5 minutes. The purpose is to engage in in-depth discussions on a theme.
Roundtable/Workshop: This involves a more informal forum to explore and discuss the issues at hand. This would be led by 2-4 individuals/organizations and the number of participants would be limited to about 30-50 people.
Poster Presentation: The presenter will display their work on a free-standing poster board for the delegates to read. Informal discussions will then merge from this process. This forum is primarily for new scholars (graduate students) and others who may prefer this type of engagement.
Deadline for proposals is Feb 15, 2010. NB: Deadline is now March 10th. For more information, contact: Susan S. Chuang, Ph.D., Associate Professor, University of Guelph, 519.824.4120 x 58389 or schuang@uoguelph.ca.NB: See Dr. Michael Ungar’s blog Nurturing Resilience.
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Defining cultural competence in early learning settings
It is increasingly being recognized that practitioners and evaluators using Quality Rating Improvement Services (QRIS) in early child development settings, must address the growing diversity of the families and children served in these settings.
The US-based National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) has created the Quality Benchmark for Cultural Competence Project (QBCCP) in order to develop a tool to assess the level of competence in programs participating in a QRIS. Driving the process was the fundamental belief that “for the optimal development and learning of all children, educators must accept the legitimacy of children’s home langauge, respect … the home culture, and promote and encourage the active involvement and support of all families, including the extended and nontraditional family units” (NAEYC 1995, 2).
Eight concepts of cultural competenece:1. Acknowledge that children are nested in families and communities with unique strengths. Recognize and mitigate the tension between the early childhood profession’s perceptions of the child as the center of the work versus the family as the center of the work.
2. Build on and identify the strengths and shared goals between the profession and families and recognize commonalities in order to meet these goals.
3. Understand and authentically incorporate the traditions and history of the program participants and their impacts on child rearing practices.
4. Actively support each child’s development within the family as complex and culturally driven ongoing experiences.
5. Recognize and demonstrate awareness that individuals’ and institutions’ practices are embedded in culture.
6. Ensure that decisions and policies regarding all aspects of a program embrace and respect participants’ language, values, attitudes, beliefs and approaches to learning.
7. Ensure that policies and practices build upon the home languages and dialects of the children, families and staff in programs and support the preservation of home languages.For more information, visit the NAEYC website.
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EU study on traditional harmful practices
The European Union has commissioned a study to investigate traditional harmful practices. From the website harmfulpractices.org, this description of the study:
“The Study aims at providing assistance to the European Union in defining and harmonising its action to end Harmful Traditional Practices, based on proven actions in Europe and elsewhere in both policy and practice. The Study shall, in particular, break new ground for the EU and provide concrete paths forward in relation to both harmonisation of legislation and policy and action at grassroots and governmental levels.
“For the purpose of this Study, harmful traditional practices will include: female genital mutilation/cutting; honour-related violence including so-called honour killings; forced marriage; force feeding or starvation for cosmetic purposes; other violent and coercive acts justified on the grounds of tradition, culture or religion that harm the well-being of those who are victims of them, with particular attention to the impact on women and girls”.
The study will examine legislation in all 27 member states of the EU, look at case studies of successful and unsuccessful persecutions, and discuss and develop indicators and responses from civil society to harmful traditional practices.
For more info, visit the study website.
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forcedmigration.org podcasts
Forced Migration Online has available for downloading a collection of audio podcasts. The latest addition is the Harrell-Bond Lecture by former UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, entitled Beyond Blankets: In search of political deals and durable solutions for the displaced.
The Forced Migration Online podcast series includes lectures and discussions between experts from academia, practitioners and policy-makers and displaced persons. -
Burka Barbie
The National Post‘s Barbara Kay has reviewed the Burka Barbie and asks why the world’s most famous fashion doll is wearing a burka, a “symbol of oppression”. From the provocative article:
“In the eyes of the majority who do consider both dolls and guns natural objects of play, however, there should be no moral distinction between Burka Barbie and a putative G.I. Joe figure in a suicide vest for essentially they both represent a medieval Islamist worldview that flies in the face of the West’s most cherished values: equality of men and women and respect for human life, including one’s own”.
Read the column here.
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Welcoming Communities Seminar, Ottawa
Metropolis Canada presents a seminar on Welcoming Communities on Jan 25/10 in Ottawa at Library and Archives Canada. The seminar is free, but an RSVP is required to project-metropolis@cic.gc.ca by January 11, 2010.
The seminar will address how Canadian communities can be more welcoming. From the announcement:“In the years to come, the growth in multiculturalism will have a marked effect on the major urban centres of Vancouver, Montréal and Toronto (where within the next 10 years, 50% of the population will be visible minorities). The effects will also be felt in the smallest municipalities and in remote areas. Because social integration must be a two-way process, it requires an ongoing willingness on the part of both immigrants and the Canadian-born population to adapt. In order for this process to be successful, and for society to be strengthened as a result, Canada’s communities must be truly welcoming. Throughout the course of the day, this collective mission will be borne in mind as we attempt to clarify what “welcoming community” means. The notion of welcoming community will be examined under four themes: 1) the degree of which federal, provincial and municipal governments are proactive; 2) the role of non-governmental organizations; 3) the urban/rural divide; and 4) Francophone and Anglophone minority language communities”.
For more info, including registration, visit the Metropolis Canada website.
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Make art, not war: Helping refugee children through art
An Iraqi/American mural project is a project of Iraq Art Mile (IAM)/Iraqi Children’s Art Exchange, (IACE) as part of The Art Miles Murals in support of the UNESCO Decade of Peace and Non-Violence among the world’s children. From the ICAE website, this description:
“IAM is sponsoring a series of murals to be painted both in the Middle East and in the US with the theme: Building a Culture of Peace: Who Are We/Who Are They. All the murals created for this project, along with documenting photographs, will be displayed in the US and in the Middle East. The exhibits will illuminate history and culture within the context of the lives, hopes, dreams and expectations of children and youth on both sides of the cultural and political divide that exists at this particular moment in history”.
In September, 2010, the murals will make their way to Egypt to mark the end of the Decade in a gala exhibition and celebration.
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StatsCan study: Canadian immigrant labour market
Statistics Canada today released a study on the quality of employment in the Canadian immigrant labour market.
StatsCan finds that there were differences in indicators of quality between non-immigrants and immigrants, with immigrants experiencing, on average, lower wages than non-immigrants. But, for newcomers who made Canada their home for more than 10 years, the indicators “more closely resembled those of Canadian born”.
Again, immigrantchildren.ca finds that investigations into employment-related issues – and, especially, quality of employment experiences – neglects to include availability of high-quality, accessible child care as an indicator.