By Shelley Fashan, Community Impact Coordinator, Nova Scotia Network for Social Change
Hello Everyone, I am Shelley Fashan, and 6 months ago I started my journey as the Community Impact Coordinator for the Nova Scotia Network for Social Change project. I arrived in April of this year right in the midst of this chaotic pandemic. A lot has been happening! For the first 4 months it’s been Zooming all the way. I am officially a ZOOMBIE. I feel like Alice staring through the looking glass in these zoom screens.
I am in a constant learning environment where my work stays exciting and innovative. Fortunately, I am not alone! The NSN4SC’s Keep It Moving Team is a dynamic bunch including Jocelyn Yerxa (NS GovLab), Mo Drescher (Brave Space), Debbie Eisan (Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre) and myself.
Essentially, my work embraces creating a network of social innovators, building skills and capacity in communities, partnerships with community and gaining a deeper understanding of aging in our province through an inter-generational lens.
A lot of interesting work has happened so far. We’ve hosted several learning sessions with Inspiring Communities Network members and others, some of the session topics included learning sessions on the Cartographies of Aging, Anti-Racism and Decolonization. Currently, we are planning and organizing several major projects focusing on aging in place. We’re also exploring important issues of social connections during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on vulnerable and marginalized communities. The pandemic has highlighted the disparities and has exposed how it disproportionately affects Black and Brown communities.
Jocelyn and Mo have been working with the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) collective. They have published the Creative Social Cartographies of Aging on the GTDF website. They share short videos of them speaking about each cartography as well as an audio file about the creation process.
While all of this was going on, we moved our offices into a new space — 201, 1531 Grafton Street, Halifax, NS is our new physical location. Also during the month of July, our team participated in Stratagem 2020: a virtual conference and digital hub on equity, inclusion and justice. Throughout the month, we were able to take part in a lot of great workshops such as: Disrupting White Supremacy for White Allies, Unlearning Anti-Blackness, Honour and Creation in Trauma Informed Care, and The Ungendering of Blackness with Melz Owusu to name only a few. Each week our team debriefed and shared our learnings together and prepared for the upcoming sessions.
Our first in-person event since the beginning of the pandemic was a discussion group in September with members of the Black and Indigenous communities, with others to follow. We were able to do this thanks to our partnership at the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre, which allowed us enough space for physical distancing. We are eager to get moving and pretty excited to be starting these important discussions with these communities. We know exploring and sparking new creative ideas and solutions will help to bring us together.
To start building solid relationships and partnerships with these communities we held a virtual open house. This gave us an opportunity to learn and share, while hearing about what’s happening in and around our province and beyond. We are looking forward to hosting more of these events.
I am so looking forward to diving into this work with the social innovators in our communities, there are many stories yet to be heard and shared and I welcome the opportunity to make this happen.
