Cultural intelligence – A necessary life skill

Progressive organizations across Canada engage employees through diversity and inclusion programs. “The business community is motivated to develop intercultural competency (IC),” says Taslim Damji, an intercultural practitioner and facilitator for MOSAIC, Multilingual Orientation Service Association for Immigrant Communities. Understanding cultural diversity and learning to empathize and embrace different behaviours is key to building strong relationships…

The housing market’s war on culture and community

World’s best city to live in”, and “World’s most reputable city” were the accolades thrown around by just about anyone who learned about my imminent departure to Vancouver. To my mind, the city has an immediate appeal and aura that these various reports and surveys seem to have tapped into: it’s pleasant, safe and in…

Success through collaboration

Bringing people together to garner success is exactly what the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Centre for Community Engagement Learning (CCEL) is hoping to accomplish, with a new project entitled Collaboratory. The project will consist of a series of events meant to bring together members of the community, diverse organizations and UBC students and professors…

All my non-relations explores kinship and reconciliation

The indigenous term “all my relations” refers to the notion of interconnectedness in all aspects of life. Clint Burnham, professor and chair of the English graduate program at Simon Fraser University (SFU), will discuss this concept in a lecture at the Coach House, Green College, University of British Columbia (UBC) on March 28. “All my…

Truth or stories in the age of social media – a millennial approach

Kids These Days: Media Representation vs Lived Reality, a talk by Katie Warfield, Ph.D., professor of communications and cultural studies at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU), will be held on March 12 at the TELUS World of Science as part of the KPU & Science World Speaker Series. Focusing on how social media platforms experience a…

Snowshoeing for a cause

The 9th annual Snowshoe race is back. This year, the organizers are partnering with Jack.org, a mental health charity empowering young leaders to revolutionize mental health. Hundreds of people, from the expert snowshoer to first timers, will be running the trail at the top of Grouse Mountain. The trail will be sure to get racers’…

Martin Luther King’s teachings about civil disobedience

“Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love. Love is not emotional bash; it is not empty sentimentalism. It is the active outpouring of one’s whole being into the being of another,” Martin Luther King Jr. As February is Black History Month, members of SFU’s Philosophers’ Café are conducting a discussion related to Martin…

Studying love bigger than race

Jennifer Adkins is a public scholar at UBC engaged in researching interracial relationships and social ideas about race. She hopes to address questions present of race and how humans relate to each other, and to debunk some of the flawed thinking that remains unaddressed in people’s minds. Every idea we don’t know we carry Jennifer…

Pesky fruit flies save lives

The fruit fly, those tiny winged insects that cluster and circulate over fruit bowls with ripening fruit, deserve a lot more respect. Local genetics researchers are using fruit flies to understand why certain genetic mutations cause tumors, in order to study therapies that might be able to counteract the cell development of cancer. “The use…

Recognition for a teacher and a community leader

Among the 2018 Civic Merit Award recipients, Leonora Angeles PhD. and associate professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC), was recognized for her academic and community work on participatory governance, social and cultural policy and gender and race analysis. The Civic Merit Award, first awarded in Vancouver in 1942, is conferred through a unanimous…

Supporting the artistic future of women of colour

The Future is You and Me, an interdisciplinary workshop series focusing on leadership brings together aspiring artists, who happen to be women of colour, says Kristen Cheung. “There’s an underrepresentation of women of colour in leadership positions,” says Cheung, one of the organizers of The Future is You and Me. “This project supports and nurtures…

From Syria to Vancouver

Mohammed Alsaleh, a refugee advocate nominated by RBC as one of 2018’s top 25 Canadian immigrants, works as the B.C. trainer for the Refugee Sponsorship Training Program (RSTP) to guide new refugees in Canada by helping them with the resettlement process. Due to the challenges that he and other refugees have overcome in their past,…

Innovative projects lead to award

Alex Beim, founder of Tangible Interaction, was this year’s recipient of the Business Entrepreneur Award at the Inspirational Latin Award ceremony. The Inspirational Latin Award acknowledges remarkable individuals who have made striking contributions to British Columbia’s Latin American community over a significant period of time. Moving for love Beim had no intention of leaving his…