Tikkun Beyond Borders: Connecting Youth Voices, Leading Change

Dr. Yvette Daniel (ed.) is Associate Professor Emerita and has taught and researched in the areas of Educational Administration, Leadership and Policy Studies at the Faculty of Education, University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. She has a particular interest in school and community issues in urban settings and their impact on leadership and the policy context at local and national levels. She led a SSHRC and University of Windsor funded three-year, international multi-sector, action-oriented research study and partnership development that facilitated and promoted youth-led civic engagement for social justice. This research project was conducted at five sites across three countries: Canada, Kosovo, and South Africa.

Janet Balyeat is a retired secondary school educator and adjunct professor at Grand Rapids Community College. Janet has worked with youth all over the world, including six years working in Kosovo. Much of her professional career has been dedicated to encouraging youth voice.

Ereblir Kadriu is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Prishtina and senior adviser of the American Advising Center – EdUSA Kosovo. Ereblir’s professional career has been dedicated to expanding educational opportunities for all Kosovar youth. His research interests include the social psychology of peacebuilding, teaching and learning, and youth civic activism.

Erwin Dimitri Selimos is an Associate Professor of Sociology at West Shore Community College. Erwin’s research interests include migrant inclusion, immigrant and refugee children and youth, youth activism, and qualitative methodology.

Ainslee Winters B.A. (Hons) * DTATI: Ainslee draws on 5 years of experience as an art therapist, community wellness program provider, and influencer to inspire and help heal young adults and adolescents. Her involvement with high-risk youth in a custody/detention facility, practice with newcomers, and assisting young adults with mental health concerns motivate and encourage her practice. Her ability to connect with her diverse clients helps support her holistic approach to wellness. An excellent facilitator, Ainslee uses her expertise to help her clients gain a deeper sense of self-awareness and connection to themselves and the community. To Ainslee, art is an exploratory avenue for people to gain insight, awareness, and knowledge while becoming directly connected with the subject matter. She hopes to continue to support self-discovery, connection, transformation, and inspiration through creative expression, holistic healing modalities, and outreach programming. She believes it is through our own self-growth process that we will begin to see ripples of growth throughout our community.

Chris Rabideau is an award winning, community-engaged artist and advocate based in Windsor, Ontario. Chris has worked as a director, producer, performer, playwright, project facilitator, and educator with various community not-for-profit organizations and educational institutions. His work has focused on creating theatre based performances and projects that address social justice issues. He is currently the Artistic Director of the Arts Collective Theatre (ACT), a not-for-profit organization he founded in 2014 that is committed to enhancing the well-being of the Windsor–Essex community through arts–based practices. Chris also works as a sessional instructor at the University of Windsor’s Faculty of Education.

In her role as Professor and Experiential Learning Specialist (recently retired) with the University of Windsor, Faculty of Education, Dr. Karen Roland consulted and collaborated with teacher candidates, faculty, and school partners to assist in the development of strategies to address social justice and equity issues in teacher education. Her research interests include teacher education, experiential learning, social justice and equity, restorative justice, knowledge communities, and educational policy and administration.

Danielle S. McLaughlin was Director of Education for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and Education Trust from 1988 to 2016. Recipient of the Law Foundation of Ontario Community Leadership in Justice Fellowship, she spent the first half 2011 as a visiting fellow at the University of Windsor’s Faculty of Education. Danielle designed, developed, and delivered CCLET’s Teaching Civil Liberties and Civil Liberties in the Schools programs that, each year, continues to engage thousands of students from kindergarten to high schools, to faculties of education, to law schools in lively discussion about the conflicts of rights and freedoms that affect everyone who lives in a democracy. She is co-author with her son, Reuben McLaughlin, of the That’s Not Fair! videos, now used widely in elementary social studies classes. Danielle is the author of That’s Not Fair! Getting to Know Your Rights and Freedoms (2016) for kids ages 7-11, and Freedom of Expression: Deal with It Before You are Censored (2019) for kids ages 9-14. She also broadcasts a weekly Know Your Rights segment on Kelly and Company at AMI.ca.

My name is Siphenathi Fulani and I am from Khayelitsha. I am a young professional and a dedicated hard working activist, a product of Equal Education. I joined Amazwi Wethu filming project in 2015. On the AW orientation camp, I was introduced to film and how it can be used in activism.

Dr. Salma Ismail is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Cape Town. She convenes and teaches at all levels in Adult Education. She has taught literacy in communities and has been an activist in worker, youth, and political movements. She has published in the field of feminist popular education, equity, and institutional transformation. She is the author of the book The Victoria Mxenge Housing Project – Women
Building Communities through Social Action and Informal Learning.

My name is Sisanda Khuzan, I’m a 21 year old activist. I was born and raised in Cape Town South Africa. I’m a second born in my family. Currently I am working at Equal Education as a community Leader. I’m part of KinoKadre. “KinoKadre is a national collective of film artists obsessed with the craft of cinema. This African Kino movement is guided by the understanding that Story drives all processes in the world of film” (KinoKadre, 2019). I’m an aspiring poet and film maker. I enjoy doing art and being around artists.

When I started in Amazwi Wethu I was 16 years old. I was doing grade 11 at Thembelihle high school and I was part of Equal Education, I was an equalizer. I then joined Amazwi Wethu where we were introduced to the Tikkun Olam Project. Now, I have finished my high school. I am currently registered for my second year in Diploma in Management, majoring in Project Management and Financial Management.

Lyndal is currently an assistant lecturer and PhD student based in the School of Education at the University of Cape Town. Her involvement with the Tikkun Project came about through her work at Equal Education, where she was the project coordinator of the youth media advocacy project Amazwi Wethu (isiXhosa for Our Voices). She co-wrote an article about this project titled: Amazwi Wethu: Exploring the Possibilities of Cinema as a Solidarity Forging Tool (Paramoer & Pottier, 2017). Lyndal’s current research is in the area of adult and community education, development and social justice.

Amanda is studious! She is passionate about both science and the Arts and is very expressive: singing, acting and writing take up her non-study hours. She’s a crazy, wild, #loverofjunkfood, and full of surprises.

When I started this project I was just a 17 year old activist, who enjoyed things that involve music especially deep house and loves to give life to his creativity through drawing and writing short stories, poems. I knew little about politics and activism. As a person who thinks out the box and likes to stretch his imagination, this was a great opportunity to enlarge my capacity of knowledge. l was then introduced to Tikkun Olam which simply meaning healing the world. This project taught me a lot of things such how to conduct a formal interview. Now I am activist artist not to mention a traveller, soon enough an author who has played a part of healing the word through collective processes in spaces like this Tikkun Olam international project. #Growingupinademocracy
is complex.

My name is Phelokazi Tsoko. I am 25 years old. I live in South Africa, Cape Town, Khayelitsha with my 7 siblings in a 4 roomed house. I’m an extroverted person who is ambitious and energetic. I’m a talkative person who likes to socialize with people. In 2016 after I involved myself in a film project I became a special needs teacher assistant at a primary school for almost 18 months, here I noticed that a teaching career was my calling. I decided to take a step forward to further my studies. I applied to a Further Education and Training (FET) College as an educare student. I passed N4: this course takes 18 months to complete, and now I’m in N5. By the end of 2019, I will complete my N6. Then I look forward to studying at the university of my choice. I want to be a foundation phase teacher and I will work hard to complete it and teach out of the country.

Erin Rose is a youth activist from the small town of Corunna, Ontario and now resides in Windsor, Ontario. Erin has her Bachelor of Arts degree in Women and Gender Studies and a Bachelor of Education degree in the Primary/Junior division. Erin has been involved with the Tikkun Youth Project since 2015 and held the University of Windsor’s Women and Gender Studies 2015 Voice award. Erin has a passion for working with children and enjoys spending time with her family and friends. She hopes that her future career as a teacher will provide a space and community for students to find their passions; she also wants to help students succeed. Erin aspires to inspire the next generations to come

Dr. Lisa Korteweg is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, Lakehead University, in Thunder Bay, northern Ontario, Canada. She researches, teaches, and specializes in settler-colonial studies and Indigenous education, decolonizing teacher education, and Land-based approaches to education-as-reconciliation.

Jacky Chan is a graduate student in Lakehead University’s specialized Education for Change MEd program. His MEd research focuses on Indigenous youth wellbeing and resilience through embodied healing practices of laughter-play yoga. Jacky received national recognition through multiple awards for his outstanding academic leadership: The Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education’s (STLHE) 3M National Student Fellowship, a Joseph-Armand Bombardier SSHRC Graduate Scholarship (2017-18), and Lakehead University’s Leadership Luminary Award (2018).

Kylee Johnstone is a graduate student in Lakehead University’s Education for Change MEd program specializing in Social Justice Education and Women’s Studies. Kylee’s academic interests include feminist theories in education, inclusivity, and equity methods for marginalized learners, and well-being counselling as school curriculum with youth. Kylee volunteers with Thunder Bay’s Counselling Centre as a youth mentor with school-based mental health groups.

Nombuso Dlamini is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at York University and the Director of Youth in Politics. Dlamini was co-applicant and researcher for the Toronto site of the Tikkun Youth Project. She also served as the inaugural Jean Augustine Chair in the New Urban Environment, York University after serving as the Research Leadership Chair at the University of Windsor. Dlamini’s research includes youth projects that focus on civic engagements, youth negotiation, and production of diaspora identities; and, gender-based projects examining immigrant women’s Canadian work experiences, immigrant women’s production of social capital, and ethnic minority women’s health and socioeconomic livelihood. She teaches in the area of youth culture, identity, and civic engagement. Dlamini’s youth-based writings include the acclaimed University of Toronto Press publication Youth and Identity Politics in South Africa, 1990-94 (Anthropological Horizons); Engaging the Canadian Diaspora: Youth Social Identities in a Canadian Border City; and Female Youth Participation in the Urban Milieu: Unpacking Barriers and Opportunities. Dlamini is also known for her global work on youth social identities, gender parity, and the effects of new urbanism in global literacy and education. She has participated in multiple interdisciplinary projects in Sub-Saharan Africa including the Social Work in Nigeria Project (SWINP).

Cynthia Kwakyewah is a doctoral student in the Department ofSociology at the University of Oxford (UK). She obtained a bachelor’s degree in International Development Studies and a master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from York University (Canada). Over the years, Cynthia has worked on different community-university research projects involving youth. She was the Research and Communications Associate for the Youth in Politics project, Youth in Politics, which aimed at increasing high school students’ civic engagement. Prior to that, she worked as a Research Assistant for the Tikkun Youth Project, Toronto site. Furthermore, as a Youth Researcher for the Engaging Girls Changing Communities Project, Cynthia conducted peer-interviews on girl’s leadership  and civic activities. Together with other youth, she helped pilot social action initiatives that encouraged young women to re-define leadership and engage in community life in their own terms. In addition to her youth-centered research activities, Cynthia has co-authored journal articles on youth civic engagement and leadership in peerreviewed journals.

Dr. Shawnee Hardware is a Researcher with the Child Development Institute, Toronto where she is developing resources for the Stop Now and Plan program www.stopnowandplan.ca. She served as the Toronto site coordinator for the Tikkun Youth Project thereafter, she became the Research Associate and Coordinator for the Youth in Politics project, Youth in Politics. Shawnee holds a PhD in Language, Culture and Teaching from York University, Toronto and a M.Ed. in Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Studies from Memorial University, Newfoundland. Her interests include student engagement, youth civic engagement, English language teaching and learning, and sociolinguistics. Shawnee has worked as a teacher in Jamaica and Japan. As a doctoral student in Toronto, she cofounded the Jamaican Canadian Youth Council (JCYC) where she facilitated other graduate students to address systemic issues that impacted Jamaican-Canadian youth’s social and educational life. While actively volunteering with the JCYC, she also served as the Youth Director at the Caribbean African Canadian (CAFCAN) Social Services where she worked in conjunction with the JCYC members to engage more youth in CAFCAN’s work and initiatives.

Nesreen Elkord is an Arab immigrant educator and a passionate scholar of immigrant students’ education. She is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Windsor and Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada. She is a member of the Windsor–Essex Local Immigration Partnership (WE LIP) and cochair of its Newcomer Youth Planning Committee. WE LIP is an initiative of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to encourage communities across Ontario to develop a comprehensive plan for the delivery of newcomer services. Elkord is published in various areas including narrative inquiry and inclusive and reciprocal education.

Lina Chaker is currently pursuing her Juris Doctor degrees from the University of Windsor and University of Detroit Mercy. While completing her undergraduate degree in Communication and Biological Sciences at the University of Windsor, she participated in the Tikkun Youth Project by exploring motivations and barriers to youth advocacy. As featured in TVO’s Short Doc, Lina dedicates much of her time to advocacy through organizing intercultural projects. Lina has amplified concerns of newcomer youth to governmental entities through provincial appointments to the Premier’s Council on Youth Opportunities and continues to do so through a federal appointment to the Cross-Cultural Roundtable of Security.

Riham Al-Saadi is a PhD student in Social Work. Her dissertation focuses on acculturation processes of immigrant populations. She is an instructor at the University of Windsor, teaching Social Work courses to undergraduate and graduate students. Riham’s practical experience involves her current role as a Clinical Social Worker at Hospice of Windsor–Essex; she was a Social Worker for an agency based in Toronto, Family Oriented Rehab Services, where she provided individual and family therapy. Riham held multiple roles at the Multicultural Council of Windsor Essex, working closely with Syrian refugees and refugees from other backgrounds, assisting
them in their first year of resettlement in Windsor on health/mental health, employment, education, and community connections. Riham has worked closely with immigrant populations, primarily immigrant youth, in other agencies – Women Enterprise Skills Training as well as Ready Set Go. Riham works in private practice, running Transparency Counseling Services. Riham has over ten years of research experience in volunteer, student, and employment roles; she is a current member in the Immigrant Youth Research Group, Emotional Competence Research Group, and a research team member in a longitudinal study on Syrian refugees’ resettlement in Windsor-Essex.

Evelina Baczewska holds a Master of Arts degree in Sociology from the University of Windsor. She also holds a combined Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in Sociology and Criminology from the same university. Her research interests include intersectionality and identity politics, as well as postmodern feminist theory and embodiment. Working on the Tikkun Youth Project, Evelina applied her critical analytical skills utilizing an intersectional and sociological approach for exploring youth politics. She co-authored an article published in the Journal of Youth Studies titled “Mapping the Strategic Politics of Social Change Oriented Youth” (2018). Her work as a sociologist analyzes human interdependence and interaction with various social structures, revealing how we collectively make up structures of oppression, as well as the power of our collective agency and potential to confront and address injustice.

Dr. Frances (Frankie) Cachon is a lecturer in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Windsor. Dr. Cachon served as a Co-Investigator for the Tikkun Youth Project and the youth liaison/mentor at our Windsor research site. Frankie is a feminist sociologist with a specialization in social justice. She is a long-time social justice advocate/activist who is committed to cultivating transformative social change through post-secondary education. To this end, Dr. Cachon’s current work with the University of Windsor’s Bystander Initiative focuses on youth-led sexual violence prevention education. Her research interests include student leadership in social change efforts, feminist pedagogies, youth-led advocacy/activism, and transnational social movements and migration.

John Antoniw holds multiple degrees from the University of Windsor, including a MSW, M.Ed., and a M.A. in Sociology. He is an Ontario certified teacher and is a registered and practicing social worker in Windsor, Ontario within the field of adult mental health and adolescent peer support. He has previously worked in a variety of domains, including: harm reduction, community development, specialized mental health, and end of life support. John was a research assistant on the Tikkun Youth Project for the duration of the project (2014-2018).