Popular Education on the Frontlines June 18, 2009

1. Popular Education on the FrontlinesJune 18, 2009 Marcelo Castro Erika Garcia Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood Centre, Toronto

2. Introduction • Marcelo Castro, Community Development and Health Promotion Coordinator, at Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood Centre, DPNC • DPNC is a multi-service agency in Toronto west side that provides services and programs to a vast array of clients from children in the early years to seniors, including settlement. • DPNC operates under community support and primary care service models. • Community Development and Health Promotion mainly involves working with the community to articulate key systemic issues and roots causes, through advocacy, capacity building and mediation.

3. Introduction • Erika Garcia, Settlement Counsellor at DPNC • Provides one to one support and referral to newcomer individuals and families, including assessment of needs, orientation, and referrals to groups, workshops and outside services. • Also, assists clients in filling out immigration forms and applications required in their settlement process. • Clients at DPNC consist of refugee claimants, Humanitarian and Compassionate applicants, visitors and work permit holders and people without any status. • 50% of the clientele do not have any status.

4. DPNC Involvement with the Project • Partner in the Public Outreach Working Group • Provided feedback • Piloting site • Trained as trainer • Try-out session in partnership with Bloor Information and Life Skills Centre • 15 participants in a 2-hour session • 2-key activities –Power play 1 and Jobology

5. Focus of the Presentation • Share our perspective regarding the use of popular education as a tool for community engagement • DPNC context for community engagement as key • Why popular education is complementary tool to our work • Share reflections regarding opportunities and challenges using the Immigrant and precarious employment popular education tool

6. Context for Community Engagement • Institutional investments to build capacity to do system change work since 2003 • Series of community-focused strategic directions: • Affordable housing, violence in the community, and access to services for non-status population. • Currently, we have a strategic direction on poverty reduction focused on building our capacity to engage community in action and advocacy to address causes of poverty • We are trying to find a balance between providing services to meet the needs of excluded people in our community and address the circumstances that exclude them in the first place. • Popular education plays a critical role in this process • complementary approach to the work and to community engagement.

7. Popular Education as being complementary • It brings us closer to the community, both the immediate on our clients, program participants --, and the broader one, which includes agencies we partner with to facilitate and/or run popular education sessions. • Commitment to support newcomer’s issues are re-affirmed • Outreach • Resource sharing

8. Popular Education as being complementary • It creates opportunities for participants to share and to reflect on experiences • Activities are participatory, promotes communication and learning • Open up opportunities for sophisticated levels of analysis through group discussions • A particular client was able to articulate precarious work as a transactional, globalized phenomena, by identifying common patterns in her experience as immigrant worker in the US and Canada.

9. Popular Education as being complementary • It gives us opportunities as service providers to learn and understand what and how big the problem is, thus giving us insight to the development of new services and programs that are responsive. So, Popular education in this case can work as a needs assessment tool. • Informs programs and services planning • Cross-departmental coordination and integration of services

10. Popular Education as being complementary • It facilitates a process for connecting individuals experiences and their histories to a source of collective knowledge • Jobology activity helped to identify patterns and assess similarities and differences • It also helped to build a bigger picture of the collective experience as a group. For instance, over 2/3 of the participants in the group migrated to Canada in the 1990s.

11. Popular Education as being complementary • It generates a will for action • All the participants responded they would return for the full series of sessions in the manual

12. Popular Education differing from Traditional/Standard Service • Case Management vs. Community Engagement • Insight of how clients interact with one another and how they deal with the problem collectively • Get to see the issues from a macro perspective rather than a micro one

13. Popular education as engagement tool: Opportunities and challenges Opportunities • Negotiations in place to development of a full program to be implemented as part of service model • Potential partnership Bloor Information and Life Skills Centre to program to Spanish speaking clients • Cross-centre team will be trained in the use of the popular education manual increasing our capacity to articulate precarious work as a concept and an issue to advocate for change

14. Popular education as engagement tool: Opportunities and challenges Challenges • Providing service beyond the education/ the NEXT • Contradictions within services’ system are highlighted • Where is my job?