Recently I had to write my citizenship exam to become a Canadian citizen. As I was preparing for my exam, I happened to recollect the time when I immigrated to Canada along with my family. It was a learning edge for all of us. We were naive about the many services/programs which were available for newcomers. A few weeks back in our seminar we had two guest speakers Yousra Dabbouk & Jenn Atkins from Access Alliance Multicultural health and community services. As I was listening to their presentation, I was thinking that it would have been nice if we had been aware of such services.
Access Alliance as the name suggests, their mission is to promote health/wellbeing and improve access to services for immigrants and refugees in Toronto by addressing medical, social, economic and environmental issues. What is interesting is that these services are not restricted to immigrant and refugees. Even those with no immigration status and other category of status can also take advantage of their services. Recently, I also happened to come across an interesting article in the Toronto Star which read “Free Legal hotline helps newcomers”.
http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/770474--free-legal-hotline-helps-newcomers
You may be wondering what the article has to do with Access Alliance. In fact, it is one of the new hotline services introduced by Access Alliance. Isn’t it cool? Being the first multilingual legal right support hotline, the service provides legal rights information, support and referrals in Arabic, Chinese, Somali, Spanish, Tamil and Urdu apart from English and French. I definitely feel that this multilingual support hotline is a helpful resource for newcomers as I feel that they can receive services in their own language. Although as immigrants when we moved to Canada we did not have language barriers but I feel that this multilingual support hotline will benefit those who find it hard to communicate in English/French.
The article also mentions, how newcomers who lose their jobs during recession find it hard to seek income support, as they fear that it might jeopardize their ability to gain permanent residency, or sponsor their family members. This takes me back to our lecture on Social Determinants of health which we discussed in class few weeks back. These are the social and economic conditions that impact or determine one’s health status. As we all might be aware, income and social status tops the list among the eleven determinants of health. Through this legal hotline, newcomers can gain access to the legal rights which they are eligible for such as the employment insurance. Even, if they are laid from their jobs, they can get income support which in itself can have positive impact on their health.
Also as I was browsing their website, I came to know that Access Alliance uses community-based research in their approach. It is a research which is conducted for and with communities on issues which are relevant to the communities with the sole aim of bringing a positive social change. Moreover it gives greater power and control to community members through meaningful participation in the research process. One word which comes to mind when I think about community based research is the word “empowerment” which we discussed in class. There was an interesting blog on ‘Semantics of Empowerment’ by Andrea. In her blog she terms health promotion as a great example of empowerment, as she feels that through the information and resources made available people can decide whether or not to change their behaviour. I totally agree with Andrea as I feel that when members of the community are empowered to take control of their lives, it will definitely help in bringing about a favourable social change.
To read Andrea’s interesting blog on the “Semantics of Empowerment” u can follow the link below
http://foraysintofood.blogspot.com/2010/03/semantics-of-empowerment.html
Yousra & Jenn in their presentation also mentioned about some of the nutrition related programs offered by Access Alliance. One such program was the NCT (Newcomers Cooking Together) program which offers newcomers an opportunity to learn food skills and healthy eating in Canadian food environment. It was quite interesting to note that they had cooking sessions for men. Apart from that, they also have one-on-one nutrition counselling by registered dietitians at the centre on a variety of health topics.
To learn more about the services offered by Access Alliance check out the link below
http://accessalliance.ca/services
I definitely feel that Access Alliance is doing a tremendous job in helping immigrants/ refugees gain access to a wide range of services and programs. Access Alliance in my opinion, is truly a boon for newcomers.
No comments:
Post a Comment