UFCW Canada is at work in your community. Through our human rights, equity and diversity initiatives across Canada, our union and our community partners work at not only servicing and vigilantly representing our members at work, we are at the heart of your community.
One of our most successful community organizing initiatives is the Community Action Network (CAN). Through CAN, we build strong friendships and partnerships with our members’ diverse communities. Members from immigrant, racialized, Aboriginal, and Disabled communities have been mobilizing under the UFCW CAN banner to continue to build a more inclusive and welcoming union, while at the same time building more vibrant and equitable communities. Through these efforts, we have been able to effect real and substantial change in the communities of our members.
For instance, one of our many ongoing projects across Ontario and Canada includes the Working Women Community Centre in Toronto. The mission of the Working Women Community Centre is ‘to provide immigrant women and their families with opportunities to improve the quality of their lives through self-development and community action’.
One of the programs offered through the centre that is financially supported by UFCW Canada Locals 175 & 633, is called “On Your Mark.” This program is an early intervention program to develop reading and writing skills for immigrant children. We strongly share the belief that no child should go without learning the fundamentals of reading and writing. We also provide staunch support to various South Asian organizations, such as the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO) and their SAVESALCO campaign. This campaign is an historic achievement for South Asian working people. Our Union has ensured that 75,000 union families recognize the inequities regarding access to justice for our members in this community. With labour and the community working together towards a common goal to effect just and positive change, we are able to directly elevate the standard of living of working women and men. Our Local Unions have helped spread the message across the labour movement and to our members in every corner of the province. Of the approximately 2,100 signatures that have been tabled in the Provincial Legislature, our Local Unions supplied more than 1,400. As a result, the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario today remains a vital resource for working people in the community. SALCO’s stability of status and funding ensures that vulnerable and low income members of the South Asian community will have access to effective and appropriate legal representation and services, which meets their needs in a linguistically and culturally sensitive manner.
We are also vocal supporters and partners of the Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC). CCNC is an organization of Chinese Canadians that promotes equity, social justice, inclusive civic participation, and respect for diversity. Our Local Unions have supported fundraising drives and dinners to support the many programs of CCNC. The Toronto Chapter of CCNC runs programs such as the Youth Engagement Initiative, Breaking the Cycle of Violence, Equity and Human Rights, and the Homeworkers Association. Together, these initiatives build education, cooperation and empowerment among Chinese youth, women, workers and the broader community.
Whether it be in the Somali, Sri Lankan or Portuguese communities, where our union is also very active, UFCW Canada is there working in your community. By strengthening our Local Unions and the level of service to our members, we continue to build on the principles of commitment, respect, justice and equality for all our members, while representing and supporting the diversity of our membership. Justice for all!
|