Monthly Archives

April 2019

Community planning Employment

Meat processing as a catalyst for rural transformation

April 24, 2019
Photo credit: Daily posts
https://www.dailyposts.org/egypt-to-construct-meat-processing-plant-in-tanzania/

Legend has it that the population explosion which took Brooks, Alberta by surprise in the 1990s was all predicted by one man who was chased out of town!

When the owners of the town’s meat processing plant sold to a multinational company in 1994, a University Professor from the US who had heard about the sale arrived in town. He went to talk with locals, the Chamber of Commerce – really anyone who would listen – and ended up in a meeting with City Council.

The man gave a cautionary message. He told them that he had been studying meat processing plants for the last 30 years of his life and warned them of the significant change about to happen within their community. He advised that it was impossible to predict exactly what this would look like but that the population was likely to double in size, and that there would be many people arriving who look different, talk different and come from different backgrounds. “One thing is clear”, he said, “you will have to adapt and change”. City Council quickly dismissed the man’s message as fear mongering and chased him out of town.

St Cloud, Minnesota shares a similar past. When PM Beef processing plant in the nearby town of Marshall closed down in 2015, over 250 employees found themselves suddenly without work. Many of these were Somali refugees who, in urgent need of a job, moved to St Cloud which was the closest major town. Since then the population of Somalis in St Cloud has boomed and is at just over 10,000 in a city of 100,000 people. Locals credit this to the initial critical mass of Somalis that moved there following PM Beef’s closure, which then sparked others to relocate from different parts of the US. St Cloud is doing well in terms of settling its new residents but there is still a real sense of concern amongst some people about the rapid pace of change. And this has caused divisions within the community.

You will see this trend no matter where you go in the world, Australia included. Meat processing companies are a major employer of low or semi-skilled workers, jobs often filled by migrants or refugees. The companies are usually pretty switched on at how to recruit and retain refugee employees. Working in an abattoir is not the most appealing job, so offering incentives like accommodation, transport to-and-from work and English language classes in the workplace can help sweeten the deal.

This impacts on communities. And when business can be the trigger for large scale demographic changes, how can community members be brought along as key stakeholders to plan and prepare? Trends like those associated with the meat processing industry are well documented, so the worst thing we can do is stick our head in the sand and ignore possible impacts. Surprises for any community will lead to conflict, so careful planning and community involvement is key.

1 Comment
Building community support Leadership

How to build a movement of change

April 21, 2019

Rural towns are full of rednecks and racists. Owen Sound is shattering this stereotype one community sponsor at a time.

For a town of 20,000 people, it has experienced a lot of change over the past few years. The catalyst was the Canadian Government’s policy to allow community groups to sponsor refugees. So far 25 refugee families have arrived, with others now also choosing to relocate to Owen Sound from different parts of Canada.

Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada

It started with a couple of key leaders, including a church minister who organised a community meeting at the local church in September 2015. 75 curious and compassionate locals showed up, many of whom had been touched by the image of 3 year old Alan Kurdi’s body washed up on a beach in Europe.

Out of this meeting, a small number of church members put their hand up to form the first sponsorship group. They brought out an Eritrean refugee family of seven. Other locals watched keenly from the sidelines. The Eritrean family were well-liked by the community and settling well. You can do it too – was the message filtering out through the town.

Monthly meetings were organized at the church to encourage others to get involved. This turned into the Grey Bruce Newcomer Network which harnessed the groundswell of support as other sponsorship groups quickly began to form. The volunteer network became a way for the community to self-organise, support one another and share insights and challenges. With the nearest funded settlement service more than 150km away there were no existing services close by and this made it even more important for the community to educate themselves to ensure that refugees were provided with the highest possible level of care and welcome.

Now it’s Thursday night in Owen Sound and I’m participating in a lively open night event at the Arden Language Centre. Diversity seems the norm here. Adult English students from all different backgrounds are proudly showcasing their culture and the building is alive with colour and vibrancy.

Open night at Arden Language Centre

Responding to a lack of English language services in the region, the school was started by husband and wife-team Andy and Dave after the first refugee families started to arrive. “Here we do more than just teach English” Dave tells me, “we build human connections”. The school relies on over 50 volunteers to teach just over 40 students. On top of the incredible language and literacy outcomes the school has enabled for students, the personal relationships formed between volunteers and students have been powerful in influencing broader community acceptance for refugees and newcomers. And importantly, this has helped newcomers feel welcome and like they belong.

Owen Sound didn’t need everything to be perfectly in place to become an inclusive new home for refugees – the community responded as the need emerged.  But it started with leadership and a seed of compassion.

With the church minister, who brought ordinary community members into a conversation around diversity and social justice. And the first pioneering sponsorship group, whose endorsement and encouragement paved the way for other locals to become sponsors. And Dave and Andy, who not only responded to a gap in services but recognised the importance of getting locals involved.


Arden students write their goals for Fall 2019. This has been a great way for school volunteers to learn what else they can help refugees with outside of class.

What Owen Sound teaches us is how big social change can often start with the leadership of one or two trusted and respected community champions. It also shows us the power of personal connections in sustaining positive change.

“Of course racism still exists here”, a local tells me, “But the difference now is that when one guy makes a racist remark in the pub, there’s 2 or 3 other guys around him to tell him to shut the ** up. And he shuts up pretty quickly!”

Before you know it, you have created a movement.

Refugee attraction

The lobster effect

April 12, 2019

via GIPHY

The question of whether it is a good thing when new refugees or newcomers from one ethnic group live close to each other is a hotly debated topic. I personally feel it is important to enable people to live close to supports from within their own cultural community when they first arrive, if they so choose. As a refugee who has come to a resettlement country after surviving displacement and persecution, being close to the familiarity of one’s own community can be an important source of both practical and emotional support.

But I also recognize that after a period of time this can sometimes lead to isolation from the broader community. That is why the work I have been doing over the past few years is targeting people who have been in Australia for some time and providing them with alternative options.

The Maritimes in Canada is world famous for its lobsters, harvested in the cold pristine waters along the north Atlantic coast. What’s the connection? I’ll let a team member from the Multicultural Association of Fredericton explain it in her own words:

“Do you know much about lobsters? It’s a known fact that if you take a box, and you put a lobster in it by himself, the lobster’s gonna get out. But if you put two lobsters or more in a box, they’ll never get out. Do you know why? Because as soon as one gets over the edge, the other one pulls him back.

That’s what happens when people go to big centres and you put them in big groups of thousands of people, their community is always pulling them back. But when you put them into a smaller community they can get out of that box easier, right? That’s the richness of spreading settlement throughout your country instead of keeping it in one place. To stop people from getting stuck in those places and pulling each other back.

It’s challenging because it’s hard for these smaller communities to support people without the monstrous amount of money that’s being poured into the bigger centres to deliver services. But in my opinion, people thrive better in the long run.”

For me it’s all about choice and empowering people to make decisions about their own lives. Let’s think about how we can help people get out of the box, when they are ready, by connecting them with alternative opportunities in other places.

Employment Refugee attraction

Farmers Feed the World – an innovative agricultural project for refugees

April 8, 2019

Suddenly finding yourself in a big city can be a daunting experience for someone who has lived their whole life in the country as a farmer. I recently met a man in the suburbs of western Sydney who had been a successful farm owner in northern Iraq when the war tore through and forced him and his family to flee. He’s been in Australia for just over a year and is becoming more and more frustrated at not being able to find work. His dream is to start his own farm in Australia but he doesn’t even know where to start.

This doesn’t make sense for the settlement outcomes of refugees but it also doesn’t make economic sense when we have rural towns crying out for labour and needing to diversify their economies.

How can we harness all of the skills brought by refugees to not only contribute to existing jobs and businesses, but potentially enhance regional growth through new agribusiness and innovation?

There are a few examples in Australia including a traditional Burundian food garden in Mildura and an African resettlement initiative to the tiny township of Mingoola.

In Belleville, Canada, Quinte Immigration Services came up with a great idea. They got together with the Canadian Red Cross and the Ontario Government to establish the Farmers Feed the World project. By engaging with farmers across the region, they identified a range of agricultural employment opportunities and then marketed these to Syrian farmers living in Toronto.

A key part of the project was hosting a series of video webinars with Arabic translation which enabled refugees in Toronto and other parts of Canada to tune in and receive information about Canadian agricultural practices and connect with employment opportunities in the region.

You can check out these videos and other resources at farmersfeedtheworld.org.

Here’s Orlando Ferro, Executive Director of Quinte Immigration Services who shared his experiences with me as well as some lessons learned.

2 Comments
Building community support Community planning

Fredericton – a town working to embed diversity

April 4, 2019

New Brunswick holds the title for the province with the fastest declining population in Canada. In 2016, the province’s population dropped to 747,101 from 751,171 in 2011 – a decrease of 0.5% in five years.

This unprecedented demographic shift is down to an ageing population (approximately 20% over 65 years old), the increasing rate of young people leaving for bigger cities and a low birth rate.

New Brunswick is also the poorest province in Canada – currently recording the nation’s lowest median household income.

A sense of foreboding looms heavy in the air, dominating the topic of conversation of the couple next to me in a local café.

People in the capital of Fredericton are worried about very serious things – the health system is struggling to cope under a stretched budget and will continue to heave under the costly strain of servicing an ageing population. Government attempts to address a shrinking tax base by increasing taxes will push vulnerable people further to the margins.

But out of dark times, opportunity and hope often blossoms. And the seeds being sown by New Brunswick are already starting to bud.

When the Syrian war broke out, the province put its hand up to settle an unprecedented number of refugees. In 2015 the first Syrian refugees started to arrive and by 2017 Fredericton claimed a title they are proud of – the city that has settled the largest number of refugees per capita in Canada. 500 refugees arrived in a city of around 55,000 within the space of a year.

Our schools are often the first places to notice the impacts of big community and societal changes. They are also well placed to respond as established and trusted institutions. Sometimes this happens before policy has a chance to catch up. But in Anglophone West School District, which includes 69 schools and 23,000 students, the influx of Syrian refugees became the catalyst for being proactive with a new policy approach.

“We wanted our policy to be best practice and searched long and hard for examples across Canada and overseas” the school district team told me.

Where they landed – a policy of inclusion, which has been adapted by the province and is now at the core of everything the schools do.

Providing inclusive public education means taking a student-centred approach to ensure that each and every student’s experience at school takes into account their individual strengths and needs. It also means being respectful of diversity and removing any barriers to learning – which includes ensuring that educational staff have the knowledge, skills and resources needed to provide effective instruction to a diverse student population.

Inclusion at Fredericton High School

An example of this is the Newcomer Support Centre. All newcomers who wish to register their children for school in the Greater Fredericton area are first invited into the centre for a one-on-one appointment to answer questions about the Canadian school system and undertake an individualized assessment of their child’s level of English as well as their social history. This enables any required supports to be linked in from early on, but also provides families with a point of connection to other useful services and information to ensure every success for their child’s educational outcomes.

Shifting our way of thinking to centre around inclusion through intentional policy setting can be a powerful means of driving social change.

In the case of the Anglophone West School District, they hope that cultivating a mindset of inclusion that starts with the students, parents and teachers in their schools will help to reinforce broader community acceptance of diversity.

Fredericton Newcomer Partnership Council

This is but one of a range of intentional measures being taken in Fredericton to grow and retain a new population. I met some of the town’s key champions at a meeting of the Fredericton Newcomer Partnership Council. The Council oversees the Fredericton Local Immigration Partnership (LIP), a local multi-level governance collaboration which aims to create a welcoming and inclusive environment for newcomers. Over the past five years, the LIP has been at the forefront of driving community support for newcomers, establishing a range of working groups to implement initiatives and galvanize whole-of-community efforts. It is coordinated by Ignite Fredericton, the local economic development agency and includes members from a range of sectors including government, business, education, training services, colleges, library and health.

Such planned, coordinated and intentional measures pay off. According to an elected Councillor from the City of Fredericton I spoke with, community attitudes have come a long way in the past 5 years. Acceptance of cultural diversity is now the norm. While some of this has happened spontaneously as more and more newcomers arrive, to a large extent it is the incremental actions aligned across sectors that seem to have made the biggest difference. This has enabled change to come from within.

Syrian refugees are choosing to stay in Fredericton, and they are fetching family members from other parts of Canada to come and join them.