First Principle:
We believe that cultural communities must have their voices heard, in the planning, development and implementation of policies and practices that will have impact on them.
Cultural communities face a lack of cultural and psychological safety when trying to engage with services that, for the longest time, have marginalized, disrespected, and trivialized their issues and attempts to become part of policy making.
It is CMCCF’s responsibility to bring forward the voices of community, so that they make play a more active role in the creation and implementation of policy that has long targeted them but hasn’t worked to serve their needs.
Our Values
DIVERSITY OF FAMILIES:
We believe as a collective of ethno-cultural communities that we need to be open to many different types of families in Manitoba. We desire to ensure that our definition of “family” captures all families and their family experiences. Our intent is to support families as they are in our many cultural communities, now and in the future.
RESPECT:
We are in a collective journey where all voices are welcomed and encouraged, every human experience will be valued, and similarities and differences will be viewed as strengths. All beliefs will be respected; however, we recognize that individual ideas and beliefs must not override the well-being and safety of the collective.
Our members’ confidentiality and privacy will be respected at all times. Each member should they desire is able to engage in serious intentional listening, constructive debate, and deliberation. Our members often come to us from a background of being dismissed and unheard and so in highlighting these experiences it is our hope all members will be sensitive to the needs of others, despite potential differences.
MUTUAL LEARNING and TEACHING:
Our collective journey is about constructing and deconstructing assumptions and beliefs; this will pave the way to find the common ground where change is possible. Our members will be open to giving and receiving information; to teaching and promoting further research, policy and practice innovations.
All new ideas will be considered seriously; however, it should be recognized that some might not be adopted due to barriers that cannot be overcome. The CMCCF will learn from and build on the resilience and successes of ethno-cultural communities, to help us direct the community agenda towards areas of achievable change.
GENEROSITY:
Our collective journey is where we will promote everyone’s talents, wisdom and gifts. We will give and receive with compassion, empathy and kindness, focusing on the common good for all and what is working well. All those on this journey will be recognized for what they contribute and also for what they receive. We will wholeheartedly champion the CMCCF within and outside of the Coalition.
COMMITMENT AND ACTIVE PARTICIPATION:
Our collective journey is where each member will be asked to fully engage in a long-term process that is dedicated to improving family well-being and viability by supporting children and youth to meet their potential.
We believe that our members will work hard to champion all ethno-cultural communities by ensuring that a broad range of communities are engaged in the process and that the process is sustained. The common good of all will be promoted through the strengths of individuals, communities, and the commitment of our members to bring these voices together.
Our Goals
- To continue to promote the safety, security and well-being of cultural community children and youth in their families
- To continue to develop an “open learning platform” with diverse health and human service providers to share and exchange information, community wisdom, experiences, tools and preventative approaches to better family life in cultural communities
- To continue to educate and build collective awareness of challenges and strengths (assets) within cultural communities, their families, and children
- To continue to promote and communicate the Coalition’s vision and purpose in the community
- To expand opportunities to grow, sustain and measure the impact of the Coalition, including growing a range of capacities, including leadership, management, adaptation and measurement and insight.
Our Guiding Framework
The foundation for our work rests solidly on these two important models of Social Inclusion & Community Well-Being.
FLOURISH MODEL OF COMMUNITY WELL-BEING
The Flourish Values Model is a new and powerful framework that we have adopted in order for communities to engage with, learn and map their community’s well-being. We believe that this model suggests a new “ecology of well-being” that puts meaning, purpose, and value at the core, while encouraging the natural healthy development of our children and their parents.
This Flourish Values Model for community well-being is:
- A natural systems-based approach
- A tool to support the understanding of the seven aspects or levels of human well-being
- A tool that underpins the importance of diversity and equality of many populations within our communities
- A way and approach of assessing and supporting the well-being needs of our communities
- A way of supporting and promoting individual well-being in a cultural community context
FIVE LEVEL MODEL OF SOCIAL INCLUSION
This model is built from the belief that cultures need to be decoded and challenged in order to change the nature of current relationships to be mutually respectful. Mutual cultures (diverse worldviews, values, beliefs, assumptions, and artifacts about each other) of disengagement currently exist between systems and cultural communities.
Mutual distrust and misunderstanding exist. All sides need to deepen and strengthen mutual contact to motivate innovative solutions to mutual learning.
The five levels of social inclusion can be defined as:
- Being recipients of service; accepting the nature and range of services provided (one-way engagement)
- Becoming “contributors” to services (two-way “seeking meaning” conversations): Community judgement, expertise, knowledge and lived and felt experiences heard but not understood or fully valued or seen as worthy
- Emerging ideas of co-creation of services directed to some cultural communities based on a limited sense of systems evolving (evolving a sense of becoming “culturally sensitive”): Not yet seeking or even understanding to be “culturally safe”
- Fully forming shared values, vision and identity leading to full and complete co-creation of “joint service models” based on systems becoming “culturally humble” and fully “culturally safe” for both parties. Focusing on becoming mutually respectful, seeking, and ensuring the dignity of the individual and family seeking and accessing services
- Decoding system and cultural communities “cultures of engagement,” shared ownership and robust systems of mutual learning (Trust, Compassion, Empathy and Wisdom). Leading to shared leadership of services provided to and by cultural communities to strengthen families and children
