Mrs. Geeta Dheer’s engagement with the community began from her kids’ schools. She asked school administration if she can get involved or help them in any way. And she had a lot to contribute. “If you can give an hour a day of your life, you can change lives,” she says.
With the expansion of South Asian community, the need for South Asians to be more actively engage in charitable causes is of paramount importance. Mrs. Dheer has been asked to be an Honourary Chair of the Rainbow Ball, a prestigious event that will be held on Friday September 24th at Mississauga Convention Centre. The Ball will raise funds to support three great local charities, Community Foundation of Mississauga, Peel Children’s Aid Foundation and Community Living, Mississauga.
Speaking of diversity within charitable organizations, Ms. Eileen MacKenzie, the executive director of Community Foundation of Mississauga, believe that there “is incredible responsiveness not only in their [community organizations’] staff makeup, but in making sure that we listen to the voices in our at the highest level of decision making.”
As an organization, Community Foundation of Mississauga, provides wide range of services. Some of these are to provide services to people who are hungry, people who are vulnerable because they have lost jobs, and to families that are undergoing conflicts because of economic stress.
Peel Children’s Aid Foundation provides services from new-borns to 21-year old youth. The aim of the organization is to protect children and to strengthen families.
While there is a certain level of distrust within the South Asian communities in terms of using services from these community organizations, Ms. Hinton says “we have build a reputation for ourselves and we work very closely with our partners.”
Ms. Chadda believes that South Asian community has, indeed, taken a step forward from mistrusting the community organizations to seeking their help.
“There was a time when people went to their friends, or church, or gurdwara or temple, but they are learning to go to other places where they can get support and services,” she says in a definite tone.
India Rainbow Community Services of Peel provides settlement services that include LINC classes, preparing people for jobs, helping them find place to live and to put their kids in schools, mediating between parents and youth to deal with duality of cultures. They also help families whose kids have been give in foster care by Children’s Aid Society. It celebrates 25 years of helping families this year.
“When kids come to Canada, they pick up Canadian values very fast, but parents stick to their values from their home country, so we try to mediate between parents and kids to find the middle path. We also interact with school systems here in this regard,” she says.
There is awareness that South Asians are reluctant to inquire about help for fear that their kids would be taken away from them by Children’s Aid Society.
The problem is “they come to us when their kids are already taken away.”
“We are appealing to South Asian community to help provide foster care for South Asian kids’ so they can be raised in families that are familiar with South Asian culture, and we have had some early signs of success in this regard,” says Ms. Hinton whose organization has closely worked with India Rainbow Community Services of Peel.
While she hesitates to categorize cases like Aqsa Pervez as cultural, she says “we need to look at family individually rather than a culture in its entirety.”
Ms. Chadda, however, thinks that many of the issues is Aqsa Pervez’ case are related to issues of dual cultural identity.
While Canada’s government touts its better banking system and that it has not been so hard hit by recession as its Southern neighbor or other European countries, the community organizations need financial help.
“Ooh yes!” Ms. MacKenzie remarked when I asked if there has been any impact on the amount of funds they had to raise in the past year because of recession. Imagine Canada has released a report saying that 25 % charitable organizations’ very existence is at risk. “When you come to think of programs and services these community organizations provide to improve the quality of life, I think we are challenged.”
Not all organizations have seen the reduction of funds though. Kitty Chadda, the executive director of India Rainbow Community Services of Peel, says “Things are tighter, but we have a great relationship with our funders, good compliance record, and our services are excellent, so we haven’t seen cutbacks.”
“We have actually seen a huge increase in number of donations. The average donation was small, but more families were donating,” says Catherine Hinton, executive director of Peel Children’s Aid Foundation. The reason again is recession that made upper middle class families realize that more help is needed, resulting in closing the gap between the more fortunate and the lesser fortunate people.
Even in the better times, to provide support and services to the community, events like The Rainbow Ball are important to help those who are in need of assistance.
“The community needs to step up,” says Ms. MacKenzie.
And faces like Mrs. Geeta Dheer have a huge potential of engaging South Asian community in charitable causes.
Author: Asma Amanat
