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Personal Reflections

August 2022 / Toronto - It is a sunny but cool morning as I sit to write this monthly blog in my messy backyard. There is a sense of peace as the cats lay about, lazily watching the squirrels go about their food gathering, all three of us listening to the wind softly rustling the leaves of the box elder maple tree overhead and the birds twittering as they call to each other flitting from tree to bush to tree.

Show Us the Money

Show Us the Money: Equitable Compensation in the Ontario Nonprofit Sector

July 2022 / Toronto - We are halfway through the year and the discussion at every sector meeting eventually turns to the worsening human resources situation in the non-profit sector and particularly in the immigrant and refugee serving sector, including women’s services. Organizations- non-profit and/or charities are having a hell of a time recruiting and retaining qualified staff in all areas of our agencies from admin to program; tech to finance. And within HR itself. 

Forward Ever

June 2022 / Toronto

I slept through it. TV on full blast at 3:00 am when I was awoken to hear CBC reporting what was by then old news. The Ford government had not only won a majority as predicted by media and other pundits, but he had a super majority. Didn’t really take it all in at that bewitching hour of the early morning; the time when our ancestors and angels whisper truths to us. I turned off the TV and went back to sleep a dreamless sleep.

In the Field Newsletter Volume 118

“Happy Mother’s Day to the moms separated by violent borders and imperialism”* was a tweet that crossed my screen early on Mother’s Day as I prepared to visit my own mother, ever thankful that my own separation from the woman who birthed me was a short three years, though as a child it felt like a lifetime. The tweet was from a feminist, anti-racist Black mother of a Black son whose community has experienced war, displacement and migration.

In the Field Newsletter Volume 117

The reported atrocities across Ukraine have added to the urgency to respond felt by Ukrainian and other concerned communities here in Canada. Since the federal government rolled out the special Temporary Resident pathway- CUAET (Canada Ukrainian Authorization for Emergency Travel) about three weeks ago, over ninety-thousand applications have been received with more than fifty thousand of these applicants applying for the three-year open work permit. Others have applied for student visas. The balance are the children and the elderly.

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