Promising Practices and Toolkits > Rexdale Women's Centre
Ethno-cultural Seniors Advocacy Project
Rexdale Women's Centre's primary goal is the empowerment of women in order to enhance self-sufficiency and individual functioning skills. This is achieved by strengthening existing abilities and the learning of new skills, and through the provision of programmes and information.
Volunteers play a vital role in delivering services and programs. For the last fiscal year 2005-06, the organization had a total of 126 volunteers who contributed 8,055 hours by providing good quality services to the community. The Senior's Working Group, for example, consists of volunteers representing various senior groups in North of Etobicoke.
Rexdale Women's Centre's consultations found that many ethno-cultural seniors stated that they wanted to share and utilize their skills and expertise, as well as expand their contact with other seniors from different cultures. They also wanted to meet with decision makers to be heard and seen. Most notably they wanted to increase their contacts with politicians, bureaucrats and policy makers responsible for services for seniors.
As part of a broader volunteer capacity building program, workshops were offered to volunteer senior leaders from various ethno-cultural backgrounds to promote their civic engagement, leadership and community development skills.
Practical outcomes included inter-generational partnerships and programs, planting trees in local parks, computer training, fitness classes, workshops, educational tours, community festivals and advocacy with local politicians to discuss community and seniors issues.
As part of their partnership with OCASI, Rexdale Women's Centre engaged in:
- Development of a training curriculum based on the development and implementation of the The Ethno-cultural Seniors Advocacy Project (ECSAP) to share information with other organizations interested in using a similar process to engage their immigrant seniors in volunteerism, community participation and social change
- Train-the-trainer sessions for organizations interested in replicating the RWC project in their communities.
- Development and/or review and update existing training materials and resources to make them relevant to different constituencies
- Delivery of a series of 3 training sessions to two different seniors groups for a total of 6 training sessions between September to October, 2007. Main themes of the training included Conflict Resolution in a Multicultural Context, Team Building Skills and Leadership Skills.
The Ethno-cultural Seniors Advocacy Project (ECSAP) - Background Information
RWC staff and clients identified that the ethno-cultural seniors had no or little opportunity for the culturally appropriate socio-recreational activities in north of Etobicoke. The Rexdale Women’s Centre also identified a gap in services to ethno-cultural seniors that which was resulting in senior’s isolation and segregation. As the result of this, The Ethno-cultural Seniors Advocacy Project (ECSAP) was initiated in March 1998. This project aimed to achieve the following goals:
- to identify and help eliminate barriers which prevent ethno-cultural seniors from accessing recreation and preventative health services.
- to foster and increase the capacity of ethno-cultural seniors to effect positive changes within their own communities and to become their own advocates.
- to facilitate collaborations between ethno-cultural seniors, service agencies and government agencies in order to effectively redress identified access issues.
The RWC organized community consultation meetings and over 200 ethno-cultural seniors participated in 21 community consultations. Seniors agreed that they needed to get more involved in their community to make changes. From the consultations, many ethno-cultural seniors stated that they wanted to share, utilize their skills and expertise, as well as to expand their contact with other seniors from different cultures. More importantly, they wanted to meet with decision makers to be heard and seen. Most notably they wanted to increase their contacts with politicians, bureaucrats and policy makers responsible for services for seniors.
The RWC approach incorporated a “train-the-trainers” model of education and service delivery with ethno-cultural seniors. The RWC began by assisting ethno-cultural seniors to organize their own social-recreational groups and to provide assistance in preparation, negotiations, fund raising, civic involvement, local activism, conflict resolution and planning for long-term stability. As the result of these findings, the RWC have successfully developed groups for Punjabi Seniors, Pakistani Seniors, Tamil Seniors, Somali Seniors, Spanish Seniors, Former Yugoslavian Seniors, Afghani Seniors, Italian Seniors, Gujarati Seniors, Ghanaian Seniors and West Indian Seniors. These ethno-specific senior groups not only enjoy socio-recreational activities but also play a leading role in the community development process.
The following are some of the achievements accomplished by the seniors in the programme:
- Making deputations, in their own language, and presented petitions, to City of Toronto committee on recreational users fees
- Being featured in local and city newspapers regarding their collective efforts to organize and bring about changes in their community
- Received City of Toronto Community Service Volunteer Award in 2005 from Toronto Mayor, David Miller
- 6 seniors received the Provincial Volunteer Service Award in 2004 and 6 seniors received the same award in 2005
- Two of our program volunteers received Ontario’s Diverse Community Award in 2006
- Worked with Public Health to obtain funding for heart health and nutrition
- Worked with City of Toronto Trees and Parks Foundation to plant native trees in Rexdale Park
- Connecting with other seniors across the city through ONPEA and PEACE partnerships.
Organizing Ethno-cultural Seniors for Action: A "how-to" resource guide to effectively empower multicultural seniors to advocate for better community services
This resource guide seeks to assist agencies and organizations that work with or anticipate working with ethno-cultural seniors in complex urban contexts. It is based on the successes and challenges experienced and faced by the Ethno-Cultural Seniors Advocacy Project (ECSAP) operating in Rexdale, Ontario.
This guide illustrates how ethno-cultural seniors in diverse urban locales can bridge their multicultural differences and unite to advocate for better community services for all regardless of ethnic background. The learning and successes of these phases have been pulled together in this guide for community workers, in the following sections:
- How to Lay a Foundation
- How to Make Contact
- How to Train and Mobilize
- How to Evaluate Success