The South Asian-Canadian Global Citizenship Project
The Mosaic Institute believes that the best Canadian citizens are also global citizens, and that many of the world’s best global citizens are Canadian. With financial support from Multiculturalism Canada and the RBC Foundation, the Mosaic Institute is continuing the delivery of its “South Asian-Canadian Global Citizenship Project” (SACGCP). This is a two-year program for young Canadians of South Asian origin, ages 15 to 30, that uses a series of workshops, dialogues and community service projects to increase their attachment to Canada and encourage them to become more involved in helping to define and enhance Canada’s contribution to peace and development in the world. This initiative will run until early 2012.
Mosaic’s original funding submission to Multiculturalism Canada set a goal of reaching 150 young Canadians through this project. As of June 2011, the project had already involved close to 400 young people.
This number includes more than 85 young people who have participated in the "Young Canadians’ Peace Dialogue on Sri Lanka" (see below), one of the community-specific initiatives under the SACGCP. In addition, some 250 young people of South Asian heritage from the Peel District School Board have benefited directly from specialized curriculum on "global citizenship" delivered during a course of all-day sessions throughout the winter and spring of 2011. This curriculum explores and reinforces the relationship between the responsibilities of Canadian citizenship and the opportunities of global citizenship for Canadians of South Asian descent.
A variant of this same curriculum will be delivered to approximately 150 students of the Toronto District School Board starting in September 2011.
Young Canadians’ Peace Dialogue on Sri Lanka
Under the auspices of its "South Asian-Canadian Global Citizenship Project", described above, the Mosaic Institute initiated a “peace dialogue” in 2009 for young members of Canada’s Tamil and Sinhalese communities. A committed group of young Canadians with a personal attachment to Sri Lanka served as the Steering Committee for this ambitious and timely initiative.
After several months of building a relationship of trust with one another, and after drafting a common Statement of Values borne of their shared passion for core Canadian values such as peace, good government, the rule of law, and minority rights, the Steering Committee partnered with the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre in presenting a series of timely, large-group forums for dialogue featuring some of Canada’s and the world’s foremost authorities on the challenges and opportunities facing Sri Lanka. Sessions on such topics as "Does Sri Lanka Need More Canada?" and "Making Peace Personal" included such notable guests as Sujit Choudhry and David Cameron of the University of Toronto; Alan Keenan of the International Crisis Group; Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu of Sri Lanka’s Centre for Policy Alternatives; Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka; ShanthiSachithanandam of Viluthu; award-winning novelist and commentator V.V. ("Sugi") Ganeshananthan, among many others.
These forums focused on the political, humanitarian and institutional challenges facing the people of Sri Lanka, and ways in which Canada and Canadians can work constructively to help democracy achieve its full promise there. Those sessions that were webcast had been viewed more than 10,000 times by June 2011. In addition, after each large-group forum, professional mediators moderated smaller forums where participants delved more deeply into the issues raised in the large-group meetings. A dozen small group sessions, involving scores of young people, were held over the course of the dialogue.
Participants in the dialogue also came together to draft a common statement of concern and action to be released to their communities, the media, and both Canadian and Sri Lankan governments. Entitled "A Canadian Statement on Sri Lanka", the document was released to the media in June 2011 and submitted to both Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to Canada after its drafters had gathered more than 50 signatures representing a cross-section of young Canadian leaders from Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim backgrounds.
In addition, participants in the dialogue series committed to supporting a "Legacy Project" in Sri Lanka that people of all ethnocultural communities could support. The idea was to identify a tangible, development-focused initiative that would symbolize the dialogue participants’ shared commitment to improving the lives of the people of Sri Lanka, regardless of any geopolitical differences they might still have.
The project ultimately identified was originally proposed by the Rotary Club of Colombo South. It involves drilling residential water wells for twenty-five (25) families of internally-displaced persons (IDPs) in the Vanni region who were left homeless by the civil war. Once completed, this project will benefit at least 125 people directly and as many as 250 or more indirectly. A group of leaders from the Young Canadians’ Peace Dialogue has initiated a fundraising campaign, entitled Build Change (www.BuildChange.ca) through which they are seeking to raise $25,000 (CDN.) throughout 2011 from both corporate donors and their own communities.
Perhaps most significantly, a survey designed by The Strategic Counsel to measure indices of trust was administered in one wave near the beginning of the Peace Dialogue, and another six months later. The results showed that "the perception that ‘there is a great deal of trust’ (between the participant communities) more than doubled," from only one-in-five (19%) in Wave 1, to almost 4 in 10 (39%) in Wave 2. At the same time, the proportion of respondents who reported that there is limited or no trust fell from 35% in Wave 1 to only 22% in Wave 2.
The Mosaic Institute is continuing to help the participants of the Young Canadians’ Peace Dialogue on Sri Lanka build bridges between their communities both here in Canada and in South Asia.
UofMosaic
With the support of the Bank of Montreal and the Aurea Foundation, the Mosaic Institute is expanding its "UofMosaic" program that seeks to promote inter-community dialogue and a commitment to peacebuilding on Canadian university campuses. The UofMosaic approach encourages students from different ethnocultural backgrounds to engage in the practice of constructive, respectful “citizen diplomacy” on campus to confront inter-ethnic conflicts and explore and recommend strategies for advancing the cause of peace both in Canada and abroad.
A test chapter was established at the University of Toronto in September 2009. In its first year of operation, the chapter convened events focused on Armenian-Turkish rapprochement, citizen diplomacy in the Middle East, the role of religion in peacebuilding, and Canadian peacebuilders in NGOs. In its second year, it hosted a successful dialogue program entitled the "Indian-Pakistani Dialogue for Peace at UofT", with guest speakers that included former diplomats, development professionals, and other community leaders.
Meanwhile, under the leadership of Program Co-ordinator Mike Morden, the Mosaic Institute undertook a national environmental scan of Canadian university campuses to ascertain the need for – and interest in –student-led peacebuilding chapters across Canada. Chapters are now in the early stages of development at Toronto’s York and Ryerson universities, where student leaders are undertaking campus-based research, and making plans for their own campus-based programming for the 2011-2012 academic year. The UofMosaic hopes to expand from coast to coast soon.
In addition to these student chapters, UofMosaic launched an online "Peacebuilding Information Commons" in spring 2011 (www.uofmosaic.ca). The Information Commons is an interactive hub for young people interested in becoming involved with peacebuilding and conflict resolution. It will be officially released to universities across Canada to coincide with the start of the 2011-2012 academic year.
"Tapping Our Potential: Diaspora Communities and Canadian Foreign Policy"
In 2010, the Mosaic Institute and the Walter & Duncan Gordon Foundation(www.gordonfoundation.ca)
embarked on a joint research project to review the means and mechanisms whereby diaspora communities in Canada are able to influence Canada’s global contribution to peacebuilding and development. Under the title "Tapping Our Potential: Diaspora Communities and Canadian Foreign Policy",the paper distills acomprehensive review of global "best practices" and current Canadian mechanisms for consulting with diaspora communities into a list of policy recommendations to be shared with decision-makers in the Government of Canada. Case studies on Afghanistan, China, Eritrea, Sri Lanka and Sudan have also been included.
The members of the project’s Advisory Committee include such notable public policy experts as Yuen Pau Woo, member of Mosaic’s Advisory Council and CEO of the Asia-Pacific Foundation; Rima Berns-McGown of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto; and Arif Lalani, former Canadian Ambassador to Afghanistan and DFAIT’s Director-General of Policy Planning, among others. This paper will be released and presented in a public forum in 2011.
To receive updates from the Mosaic Institute, please click here.