What Is a Roundtable?
At the CMCCF, we define a Roundtable as a collaborative gathering between groups of people who have a shared interest and/or vision. Examples of a Roundtable could be a facilitated meeting between cultural community members and staff from Child and Family Services (CFS) or a cross-cultural story sharing experience.
What Is the Purpose and Value of Roundtables?
We believe Roundtables can have many different purposes and values. For us, some of the most important include building trusting relationships, increasing understanding of the needs of members of cultural communities, creating a space for deep listening, and bringing to light collective strengths and areas of opportunity so all groups can move forwards in a positive way. As in all of the work of the CMCCF, our Roundtables are also guided by our First Principle in which we strongly “believe that cultural communities must have their voices heard in the planning, development, and implementation of policies and practices that will have an impact upon them.”
How Do Roundtables Help Cultural Communities?
Our Roundtables provide a culturally and psychologically safe space for community members to share their views and ideas on important issues directly with policy makers, service system leaders, service providers, and other community members. This is especially important for Roundtables between communities and policy makers. By gathering together in the spirit of mutual respect and collaboration, all groups can feel as if they have a seat at the policymaking table. Roundtables also provide opportunities for mutual learning, so that members of cultural communities can gain a deeper understanding of how systems work in their region, while policy makers gain knowledge of the strengths cultural communities can bring. This can lead to more positive outcomes for all groups involved in the Roundtable.
Is the CMCCF Currently Hosting Any Roundtables?
We are currently involved in 2 Roundtables: “Child Well-Being” and “Cultural Communities and Families at Peace.” You can read more about these projects below. We strongly believe in the value and power of Roundtables to help create and strengthen healthy communities and healthy families, so they are a large part of what we do as an organization.
How Do I Get Involved?
We’re happy to hear you’re interested in getting involved in or learning more about our Roundtables. Please go to the Get Involved page and complete the form to let us know your interests, questions, or suggestions. We look forward to hearing from you.
Child Well-being Roundtable
The vision of our Child Well-being Roundtable is to see cultural communities positively influence child welfare policy, services and practices. We have been meeting on a regular basis since January 2021 to learn from each other, share common concerns, and hopes for the future.
We see collaboration as key to moving forwards and achieving our vision. As cultural communities, we believe that we can and should be active participants in the creation and implementation of policies as they pertain to our children and families. We are actively seeking further dialogue with the Child and Family Services (CFS) system to ensure all voices are heard, and policies are culturally sensitive, responsive, and forward looking.
For more information about the work of our Child Well-being Roundtable, please see the Presentation Document (June 2022) or the Annual Report (October 2022) below.
Read about the formation of our Child Well-Being Roundtable here.
Cultural Communities and Families at Peace Roundtable
The vision of the Cultural Communities and Families at Peace Roundtable is to create a cultural community network in which there is a sustained focus on strengthening peace in families. This is a network where learning, sharing, co-creating, and advocating takes place to positively influence a sense of peace, reduce stigma and stereotyping by others about cultural community violence. Through our roundtable and community engagement, we aim to support cultural communities to act together to strengthen peace in their families and their communities.
We are currently in the stage of roundtable development, creating a core discovery framework to guide our ongoing work and guide our plan of action as we begin situating the specific goals of each roundtable.
For more information about our Cultural Communities and Families at Peace roundtable please see the Status Update Report, November 2022 below.
