Join us on Friday, July 14 from 10am-3pm to celebrate the opening of Collingwood Days Festival! There will be children’s arts and crafts, drum circle, storytelling, and spoken word on site. Hosted by Leona Brown.
Online registration is now available through our web portal. Follow the link below or call 604-435-0323 to register on the phone.
Through playful and dynamic embodiment activities this workshop will provide a safe space to explore movement and its creative metaphors!
Participants will play with their ever-changing bodies, tapping into their inherent intuitive movement; giving space for it to be recognized, witnessed and embraced. The session will incorporate an opening circle; grounding exercises; movement exploration tasks incorporating visualization and imagery; group connection; and debrief circle.
Online registration is now available through our web portal. Follow the link below or call 604-435-0323 to register on the phone.
Twenty-year-old Aliyah landed in Canada in May 2021 to reunite with her parents. Stepping into a new country, Aliyah could not speak English. She also had minimal literacy in Chinese due to reading difficulties. With so many challenges, her circle was limited to her home and parents.
In September 2021, Aliyah met Helen Su, a Chinese-speaking settlement worker at Collingwood Neighbourhood House (CNH). After a needs assessment with Aliyah, Helen initiated “Guided Pathway,” a comprehensive support strategy to direct her to available resources. Together, they created an action plan aiming at helping Aliyah to settle more quickly.
Following the action plan, Aliyah joined the LINC (Language Instruction for Newcomers Canada) program. Sitting in the Level 1 class, she was able to communicate with the instructor and even more, she started to make friends in her class. Meanwhile, Aliyah registered for the Make Your Mark program where she could relax and enjoy creativity. She also participated in an art therapy workshop where she learned to express her feelings and thoughts with different paintings. All these activities offered through our Community Development team empowered Aliyah to break through her limitation and isolation. Now she has become much more open-minded, happier, and more active in the community.
The action plan also directed her to navigate the health system and identify the available resources supporting her medical needs. Through Community Living BC, Aliyah received benefits and joined programs that helped her have a life filled with many possibilities.
Aliyah’s experiences reflect the core value of settlement services at CNH. Our service is not as quick as a one-time meeting with the client. It is a long-term journey with much supporting and accompanying. Our services are not as simple as just filling out a form. They imply caring and empowering, navigating and advocating. Our services not only aim to meet the newcomers’ basic needs, more critically but also to help them integrate into the community and eventually find ways to contribute their strength to society.
Settlement services are available at CNH to support newcomers and immigrants in a variety of first languages. Our hope is to see you and your family make Canada your new home. All programs and services are free! For more information about settlement services at CNH, visit: https://www.cnh.bc.ca/settlement or call 604-435-0323.
April 16-22 is National Volunteer Week! We recently celebrated CNH’s volunteers at our Volunteer Appreciation Event at CNH to thank and honour them for their continued generosity in contributing to and building an interconnected community.
This year’s theme is “Volunteer Weaves us Together,” and this couldn’t ring more true to the hundreds of folks who poured in hours to volunteer for our programs and services. Our continued growth and expansion is thanks in huge part to our volunteers, who continue to generously share their time, talent, and energy to support one another and in turn, the community.
This week, we are sharing some stories from our staff—and the volunteers themselves—that celebrate these volunteers’ collective impact through their kindness, generosity, and commitment.
From Eda Ertan, Seniors Health/Literacy Manager:
Alan Widdows started engaging with CNH as a Social Prescribing Program participant. Currently, he is bringing his love for reading by volunteering for the Literacy Outreach Program’s EAL Book Club. His deep knowledge and previous experience working with Indigenous communities and his purpose to contribute to meaningful causes made him a strong asset to CNH. In addition to his role at CNH, he volunteers his time on the Patient Advisors Network for the Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing to enhance the health and well-being of older adults in Canada.
Community Development is one of six departments at Collingwood Neighbourhood House (CNH), offering a mix of programming to local residents and community members. In this post, they describe the definition of community development and what that means to their team.
We bring neighbours together based on shared interests, common issues and shared identities, as well as across generations and cultures. They identify the issues they want to address or the opportunities they want to explore.
Communities use their assets and shared strengths to make an equitable change. Community Development staff support neighbours to build the capacity to work together to pursue the changes they want to see.
This process leads to an interconnected, equitable, just, and sustainable society with strong, resilient communities at the heart of decision-making.
Community members continue to inform CNH programs, priorities, and initiatives, as well as have the skills, connections, and passions to create and shape initiatives in their communities.
View or download the graphics as a PDF.
Community development is a process where people come together to take action on what’s important to them. Community development helps communities to organize, and to identify the issues they want to address, or the opportunities they want to explore.
For more information, call 604-435-0323.
Come learn about Hawaiian life ways of knowing, living, and caring through song and dance. You will learn about Hawaiian gods like Pele and Hi’iaka, hula traditions, and understand the innate need to take care of our natural environment. This class will culminate in a performance at Collingwood Days.
Register through our new registration portal (online payment) or call 604-435-0323. Registration is also available on-site with reception staff at the CNH Main House.
Join us at the CNH Annex to work on old and new art projects! Every Thursday, we offer space for sketching, watercolour painting, acrylic painting, origami, embroidery, knitting, crocheting and more. This is also a great opportunity to drop by our art studio to learn and share skills.
Drop-ins are welcome, no registration is required. Basic art materials are provided by donation.
Online registration is now available through our web portal. Follow the link below or call 604-435-0323 to register on the phone.
For questions, please contact Yoko at 604-428-9142 or at ytomita@cnh.bc.ca.
By Sylvia Barnett & Jim Chow, CNH community members
The ‘Take a Book, Leave a Book’ book box is officially installed on the front lawn at CNH! The book box was designed and built with the idea of promoting learning and community connection through literacy. Community members can take a book and leave a book!
The bookcase was built by Jim YC Chow, a CNH patron, who sourced 98% of the upcycled materials from construction sites around the lower mainland that were going to the garbage facility. Chow designed and built the bookcase with tools from the tool library, CNH, and his own, on the fly as materials became available over the months.
The project was initiated in the spring of 2021 by Sylvia Barnett, a community member, who ran the idea by Chow and got approval from the CNH board and grant funding from Neighbourhood Small Grants, a program by Vancouver Foundation, for miscellaneous parts, materials, and other expenses, such as transporting materials and purchasing plexiglass and paint from Lowes, which is located in the neighbourhood.
After months of meetings with CNH patrons on the design, logistics, materials, and artwork done by CNH’s Families Branching Out program, the official book box was finished on December 19, 2021.
We are reaching out to invite folks to collaborate in the creation of a new committee based in the Renfrew-Collingwood Neighbourhood representing 2SLGBTQA+ communities.
In 2019 and again in 2021, an informal group that included CNH staff, neighbourhood volunteers, and partner organizations worked together to organize successful Renfrew Collingwood Pride events. We acknowledge and thank Sterling James, who initiated the formation of this group. After organizing these events last summer, there was interest from community members to have a formal committee to support organizing in the neighbourhood. That is why we are looking to start a new committee!
In order to do this, we would like to come together as an interim planning group to create the terms of reference for the committee, including the community responsibilities, committee name, and process for new members to join. Once this work has been finalized, we hope that the official committee will be formed by April 2022.
We are inviting representatives from community organizations, residents and individuals connected to Renfrew-Collingwood neighbourhood, with priority given to BIPOC 2SLGBTQA+ individuals, to join 3 planning meetings starting in January 2022 to work together to create the committee structure.
Please email Emily Rees by January 10, 2022 if you are interested in being involved.