Aliyah immigrated to Montreal a year ago. At the first Young Women Youn Leaders (YWYL) workshop she told the group that she wasn’t interested in participating. “This isn’t my community, I don’t want to be here.” But she came back the following week and she kept coming back. When Aliyah’s group was asked to help organize and host a meeting for the other groups in the program, this became a major turning point for Aliyah. She took leadership in their Action for Change project: “We are Fleurs de Force. We are a group of young leaders in the community. If you are a newly arrived immigrant and you feel lost about what to do next in your new country, come to us we can help with most problems faced. Our priority is to help immigrant women (…) who are looking for the right places and the right information to get what is suitable for their situation.” By the end of YWYL, Aliyah had found a place in her group and in Montreal. *Name has been changed to protect identity TIPS AND TOOLS – The experience of our Young Women Young Leaders program enabled us to develop a tip sheet on how to engage young women in decision making. Download it here > (PDF) –
Young Women Young Leaders Starting in 2012, 60 young women from 4 Montreal boroughs participated in 70 workshops to build their self-confidence, knowledge of barriers to their participation and skills for initiating change. The local partners included the Maison d’Haïti in Saint-Michel, the Carrefour Jeunesse-Emploi Côte-des-Neiges, the Dawson Community Centre in Verdun and The Youth Committee of the Montreal Urban Aboriginal Community Strategy NETWORK, in partnership with Quebec Native Women INC. Young Women, Young Leaders was launched in Winnipeg and Vancouver in the fall of 2015 thanks to the generous support of the TELUS Vancouver’s Community Board and the Winnipeg Foundation. This program was made possible thanks to the generous support of Status of Women Canada.