WAVS helped to advance Indigenous women’s recovery from the impacts of COVID-19 through a systemic approach to addressing GBV. Specifically, this project addressed barriers experienced by Indigenous peoples with and without disabilities, by designing and implementing a gender-based, Indigenous-centred, long-term preventative ‘Community Safe Hub’ to respond to the systemic gaps in mainstream GBV services for Indigenous families experiencing violence.
The Trafficking & Indigenous Women with Intellectual, Cognitive and Psychosocial Disabilities: Promising Preventative Practices initiative sought to learn more about the specificity of these experiences to develop and implement culturally and disability sensitive promising practices for potential community supporters and women and gender diverse people themselves.
Promosing practices were developed to highlight the nature of trafficking experiences, risk factors, service barriers and supports needed for Indigenous women and gender diverse people with intellectual, cognitive, and psychosocial disabilities who may be vulnerable to trafficking. For more information please view the report: https://irisinstitute.ca/resource/trafficking-indigenous-women-with-intellectual-cognitive-and-psychosocial-disabilities/.
The Community Circles of Support Addressing Systemic Racism in Local Communuties – A Gender-based Intersectional Approach initiative funded by Canadian Heritage (2022-2024) set out to bring systemically marginalized groups together to identify issues of racism and work together to promote awareness in their own communities. Through the framework of the LSISN, individuals and communities have been encouraged to consider the various ways solidarity can be used as a practical tool to address anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, and other forms of racism.
A key objective of this initiative was to design community-based awareness raising tools that could be used by front-line workers from local mainstream and community agencies serving systemically marginalized communities, specifically, Indigenous, Black, racialized, refugee and 2SLGTBQIA+ peoples, Deaf people and/or people with disabilities. These fact sheets provide information on the context of structural racism, tips on engaging Indigenous community members, and includes discussion questions to prompt dialogue, reflection and understanding.
The Reaching Home – Promoting Inclusive Housing for Marginalized People with Intellectual Disabilities initiative set out to address the following objectives, by designing/copiloting evidence-based tools and strategies in three communities in Canada: Iqaluit, Toronto, and Winnipeg.
The first objective is to develop resources and strategies to effectively identify and respond to the homelessness and housing vulnerability experienced by people with intellectual disabilities. These resources and strategies will be used by local public services and community agencies serving specific populations with intellectual disabilities, including: Indigenous nations. people fleeing gender-based violence, and racialized people, with a focus on seniors and youth from these populations.
The second objective is to develop tools and strategies for community leaders and agencies to design intentional Local Safety and Inclusion Solidarity Networks (LSISN) to ensure that people with intellectual disabilities are not isolated and vulnerable in their communities even if they have access to affordable housing units.
The overall aim of this initiative is to improve the capacity of local community stakeholders to identify and respond to housing vulnerability of marginalized Canadians with intellectual disabilities.
The New Society Institute (NSI) has been working on an initiative that aims to address barriers to labour market participation for marginalized Deaf and disabled women∕gender diverse people through use of the online platform, The Accessibility Exchange (TAE). The project’s ‘target’ communities are Indigenous, Black, racialized, non-status, refugee women and gender diverse Deaf and disabled people, with a focus on intellectual, cognitive, and mental health disabilities.
TAE is an online platform connecting people with disabilities and Deaf people to federally regulated organizations (FRO), to identify and remove barriers to their services, as mandated by the Accessible Canada Act. TAE is meant to create income generating opportunities for disabled and Deaf people who experience numerous barriers to employment, e.g., lack of work-related disability supports and discrimination. TAE offers opportunities for disabled and Deaf women and gender diverse people to gain skills needed to become paid consultants, earning real wages by providing their expertise to FROs in safe-discrimination free environments.
Through this initiative, NSI has also began to develop practical strategies that will address distinct, gender-based disability and intersectional barriers, to securing TAE work contracts. For the target group to prosper through TAE, workplace strategies are needed to combat gender-based racism, ableism, transphobia, audism, and mental health stigma in attaining contracts and to address intersectional sexism and genderism in FRO’s hiring practices.
