Building Alliances Between Fractured Communities and the Academy: Challenges and perspectives

1
Building Alliances Between Fractured Communities
and the Academy Challenges and perspectives

• Prepared by
• Dr. G. Lafreniere
• Faculty of Social Work
• Wilfrid Laurier University

2

• The literature is quite clear as to how
  Aboriginal people, members of developing
  countries have suffered through colonization
• This reality informs our praxis as partners and
  as allies whenever we work with and\or within
  Native - African communities

3

• Just as we feel it crucial that resistant
  politics and strategies are informed by such
  critical knowledge, so too are we pointed in our
  belief that any such strategies must be engaged
  within a philosophy of hope
• Very little is written on allies\allied
  institutions working with Aboriginal\African
  communities.

4

• 2002 Four Directions Aboriginal Restorative
  Justice Project
• 2002 Healing of the Seven Generations
• 2003 Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Services
  Waterloo Region (KD CHC)
• 2005 Survivors of war, torture, organized
  violence Hamilton (Hamilton CHC)
• Exodus of francophone Africans - Quebec, Ontario
  (CLSC CDN Montreal)

5

• Mullaly (2001) argues that progressive social
  work praxis must engage an anti-oppressive
  framework
• Gramsci (1988) and Valtonen (2001) argue that the
  marginalized can and should be instruments and
  initiators of their own interventions

6
Importance of University\Community Collaboration

• Gronski and Pigg (2000) argue that such
  collaborations are fundamentally important to
  efforts aimed at supporting marginalized people
  in self-reflexive explorations of oppression and
  resistance
• Marullo and Edwards (2000) CBR not especially
  valued in the academy
• Boyer (1999) scholarship of engagement

7

• Lafreniere and Diallo (2004) universities are
  inevitably reshaped as they enter partnerships in
  the community we call this academic
  repositioning.

8
Determining factors influencing
university\community collaboration

• With regards to the Healing of the Seven
  Generations Project
• 1) Our initial collaboration grew out of a common
  denominator of social justice and solidarity and
  as such a resulting friendship emerged.

9

• 2) Individuals came together, not institutions
• 3) Strong common denominator between African and
  Aboriginal leaders
• 4) Strong leadership\Donna partners were clear
  about expectations
• 5) Academic partners have supportive work
  environments
• 6) Rewards and challenges

10
Relationship to social entrepreneurship
Co-operative model of development

• reluctant adept of the co-operative model
• Healing of the Seven Generations
• Best Start daycare (daycare co-op)
• Community Health Centre (CHC co-op)

11

• Finally, with respect to the SSHRC project, the
  Social Innovation Research Group will attempt to
• Understand impact of co-operative model on
  assimilation relative to minority Francophones
  in Ontario
• - Survivors of war and torture project carry
  over research to include\integrate an exploration
  of the co-op model integrative tool for
  minority Francophones immigrating to Southern
  Ontario via country of origin or Quebec
  (Hamilton, Brampton, Toronto)