In the final episode of the Creating Communities of Care Podcast, we review what we’ve heard over the past five episodes. If there’s one thing that we’ve learned in this process, it’s that culturally-specific and community-based approaches to addressing gender-based violence show promising results that speak to a larger need for these types of programs to be more widely available.
There is a lot of work to do before the social problem of gender-based violence is fully addressed in our communities, but there is also a lot of hope.
Hope that we can learn from mistakes and successes alike to build better systems and structures that support all members of society equitably. Hope that the women who receive help today are likely to become the individuals helping others tomorrow. And finally, hope that examples like the one set by the Creating Communities of Care Project are followed by more people, organizations, and institutions.
We now know better, so it’s time to do better.
RESOURCES:
If you heard parts of your own story in this podcast, and are interested in learning more about the organizations mentioned in this episode, please refer to the following:
More about Creating Communities of Care
Association of Black Social Workers:
- Contact or intake number/email: ccc@nsabsw.ca OR 902-407-8809
- Link to online intake portal: https://www.nsabsw.ca/contactus/
Elizabeth Fry Society of Mainland Nova Scotia:
Mi’kmaw Legal Support Network:
- Contact or intake number/email: 902-379-2042 OR 902-895-1141
- Link to online intake portal: www.MLSN.ca
Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre:
What is Creating Communities of Care?
In an effort to address the barriers and gaps in care experienced by African Nova Scotian and Urban Indigenous women in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia), four organizations banded together to provide culturally-specific programming to address the issue of gender-based violence as it appears in these two communities.
Inspired by Indigenous customary law and Afrocentricity, these programs aim to address the failures of our inherited colonial systems by connecting women with other members of their community in spaces where their culture is integrated into the care they receive. Although this project has seen huge successes so far, but there is still much to learn, and much more work to do.