ImmigrantChildren.ca Archive

Category: Identity

  • Welcoming newcomers to Canada: How to, by Metropolis Canada

    Metropolis Canada held a national forum in January asking presenters to answer the question “How could communities be more welcoming” to immigrants. Several presentations are now available on their website.
    Interesting note: One of the presentations by CIC defines “integration” as “the ability to contribute, free of barriers, to every dimension of Canadian life – economic, social, cultural and political”. (Source: Metropolis Canada Welcoming Communities presentation by CIC staff member Deborah Tunis).

  • Toronto's Hot Docs festival offerings on multiculturalism, integration, equity, racism & child rights

    Among the showings at Toronto’s annual Hot Docs film festival, running from April 29-May 9, 2010 are:

    In the Name of the Family ~ about Aqsa Parvez and her so-called honour killing
    Listen to This ~ Pianist Thompson Egbo-Egbo starts a music program at his former school in Toronto’s Jane-Finch community
    Babies ~ just babies in settings around the world (also see film website)
    Grace, Milly, Lucy … Child Soldiers ~ the lives of Ugandan child soldiers
    The Day I Will Never Forget ~ about female genital mutilation in Kenya
    Made in India ~ about tourist surrogacy and the reproductive industry in developing countries.

  • Call for papers: Special edition on ethnic minority children

    The Society for Research in Child Development journal Child Development Perspectives is seeking papers for a special issue focusing on “positive development of minority children. This special issue will feature emerging trends and new conclusions that have advanced the understanding and knowledge base of positive development with regard to ethnic minority children”.
    Deadlines for abstracts is May 15, 2010. For more information, see the SRCD website.

  • Newcomer Children Information Exchange – new website

    The Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Services Agencies of BC (AMSSA) has launched a new website to provide information related to newcomer children. The site Newcomer Children Information Exchange includes information, resources and other items of interest in several areas:

    • Early Childhood Education
    • English as a Second Language
    • Family Dynamics
    • Health and Wellness
    • Multiculturalism and Identity
    • Adaptation and Integration
    • Schooling
    • Socio-Economics

    immigrantchildren.ca welcomes this new presence in cyberspace that addresses the specific and unique needs of immigrant, refugee – all newcomer – children.
    The site also features:
    • A searchable database of useful research reports, educational materials, and web links
    • Theme pages that provide a general overview of key issues affecting newcomer children
    • The eventual home (and archive) of the ANCIE e-newsletter.

  • Feb 21 is International Mother Language Day

    International Mother Language Day was first proclaimed by UNESCO in 1999 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity.
    Related resources:
    mylanguage.ca ~ mylanguage.ca, a project of Dr. Roma Chumak-Horbatsch, Ryerson University’s School of Early Childhood Education, provides evidence-based research and multi-lingual resources to support parents, teachers, early childhood practitioners and other interested service providers in maintaining and protecting minority languages spoken by children and families in Canadian homes. This year, graduate students of Dr. Chumak-Horbatsch invite the Ryerson community to the School of ECE to commemorate International Mother Language Day.
    facebook page ~ set up by Vox Humanitatis, a non-profit organization that supports “less resourced cultures” in maintaining their culture and languages.
    UNESCO International Symposium: Technology and the Mother Tongue: Friend or Foe? ~ as part of a 2-day event to mark IMLD, this symposium will bring together researchers, academics and other experts in Paris to discuss “bridging global and local languages and translation, mutual understanding and stereotypes”.
    UNESCOs Multilingualism on the Internet ~ the 2004 online issue explores “the linguistic impacts of the Internet and at filling this knowledge gap”.
    Leave a comment here in your mother language – and tell us what it is!
    Dzi?ki! (Polish)

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Multiple diversities: immigrant and refuge child identity, Toronto event

    The Community Health Systems Resource Group, Learning Institute at the Hospital for Sick Children presents a symposium on Dec 1/09 on Multiple Diversities: Child/Youth Identity and Life Outcomes.
    From the flyer: “How do the ways that we see young people affect the way they see themselves?  What are the impacts on their health and well being? How can we use existing knowledge to ensure optimal life outcomes for all of Canada’s immigrant and refugee children? This symposium will be of particular interest to:  educators, health care professionals, social service providers, policy makers, non governmental organizations, child/youth associations, researchers and students”.
    The symposium will be held in the MaRS Discovery District, Toronto.

  • Stateless children

    Refugees International presents Futures Denied: Statelessness among infants, children and youth. According to tthe childtrafficking.com listserv, some 11-12 million children, “though born and raised in their parents country of habitual residence” are stateless or without effective nationality.
    Stateless was a concern raised when new citizenship policy, impacting first generation of international adoptees, was introduced by the federal government in the Spring of 2009. The new regulations offered an option to grant immediate Canadian citizenship to adopted children, but put limits or conditions on any children they might have outside of Canada. The rationale for the policy change was to provide an additional option for adoptive parents who were pursuing citizenship status for adopted children through the naturalization process. For more info, including to external links, see the posts at immigrantchildren.ca and chidinterrupted.ca.