Projects and Initiatves
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Tales from Afar: Old Stories from New Residents
Engaging Newcomer Volunteers
Collective Impact to Improve Newcomer Employment Outcomes
Home is Where the Heart Feels: Refugee Day Photo Exhibit
2017 LIP Community Forum
Tales from Afar: Old Stories from New Residents
The St. John’s Local Immigration Partnership and the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador (HFNL) are collecting old stories from new residents as part of a project to share the diversity of oral traditions that exist within the region, and to showcase traditional stories and folktales from around the world.
Sharing folktales can highlight the commonalities between cultures, and help build an understanding between people by bridging cultural, political and religious views. Sharing stories we grew up with is a way of bringing people together.
Types of stories include folktales, legends, myths, stories of saints and miracles, ghost stories, fables, or traditional children’s tales - any story that has been passed down by word of mouth. Participants could be newcomers in the truest sense of the word - recent refugees, temporary foreign workers, international students, newly arrived professionals or economic migrants, or well-established immigrants who have long since made St. John’s their home. Organizers will work with participants to edit the stories for publication once they are collected.
The project will be developed into a booklet of world folktales and will be made available in print, online, and shared at community events and with key organizations. View the project media release here.
Engaging Newcomer Volunteers
Volunteering can be a great way to create strong social connections between new Canadians and Canadian-born residents while creating the opportunity to expand networks and develop skills for future employment. When organizations engage newcomer volunteers it can help them become effective employees by tapping into a diversity of competencies and experience, widening the pool of potential volunteers, and raising cultural awareness within the organization.
The LIP and the Association for New Canadians (ANC) work together to help voluntary organizations integrate simple supportive practices to address barriers newcomers may face in volunteering. Voluntary organizations will participate in a focus group and a volunteer fair to apply these practices to promoting volunteer opportunities. A toolkit with strategies to engage newcomer volunteers will be developed for voluntary organizations.
Collective Impact to Improve Newcomer Employment Outcomes
Collective impact is 'an advanced form of collaboration which brings together different sectors for a common agenda to solve large complex problems'. The LIP is exploring using collective impact as a guiding framework to foster better collaboration and work towards long term impact. Over the next year, the LIP Employment and Labour Needs Working Group will be piloting a collective impact process with the goal to improve newcomer employment outcomes.
Home is Where the Heart Feels: Refugee Day Photo Exhibit
In 2017, the ANC and the City of St. John’s held the second annual World Refugee Day Photo Exhibit at City Hall from June 20 to July 11. 'Home is Where the Heart Feels' was designed to reflect on the settlement and integration experiences of young refugees living in the province. It also provided the public with an opportunity to interact with, and learn from, some of the newest members of the community.
Listen to some youth photographers talk about their experience taking part in the project on the CBC morning show. Interviews with participants can also be viewed on the City of St. John's Youtube Channel.
On March 2, 2017 the LIP hosted its annual community engagement event at City Hall. The purpose of the forum was to increase the LIP’s capacity to build a welcoming community through networking and information sharing. 85 people attended the forum, participating in a day long series of presentations and workshops on immigration in the province, promoting diversity in organizations, education and newcomer health and wellness.
In conjunction with the forum, the LIP partnered with the St. John’s Board of Trade to offer an event called 'Hiring Newcomers: Employer Information Session'. The session included a local 'success story' describing the process and benefits of hiring newcomers to Canada, as well as a question and answer period with Sean Morency, Employer Liaison Officer for Atlantic Canada with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Topics included who is allowed to work in Canada, types of temporary resident status, overseas recruiting, the Express Entry program, and the new Atlantic Immigration Pilot Program. For more information read the 2017 LIP Community Forum Report.