Creating a sense of belonging is vital for inclusive community building. This is especially true for marginalized folks who face multiple barriers. When people feel welcomed and valued, they’re able to contribute their talents with confidence. Belonging also builds trust, connection, and shared purpose among neighbours. By fostering inclusive spaces, Hamilton becomes a place where everyone can thrive and feel at home. 

In this episode of Vital Signs, Rudi Wallace hosts Rashed Afif, CEO at Wesley, a long-standing non-profit helping community members in Hamilton, Halton, and Brantford with housing, family and newcomer support, employment services, and food. Rashed shares his thoughts about cultivating a sense of belonging for newcomers and folks with diverse lived experiences. 

Key quotes

 “Belonging starts from the time you greet someone at your door. That’s how Wesley starts customer service and creating a space for someone to see themselves in other programs…we want to make sure they see themselves within the team. We have a newcomers team that speaks more than 30 languages just within the team. And a lot of them are newcomers and came to this journey with that lived experience.”  

“Wesley is the sole provider of resettlement assistance in Hamilton and Brantford. Someone freshly come to the airport, and from the airport they come to our transitional housing at our reception house. They are being welcomed and they have their own unit, and the staff speaks, as I mentioned, more than 30 languages. And it’s very likely that they see someone from their own culture.” 

“Two years ago we had this cohort of asylum seekers that came to Canada and they were in the shelter systems. And that’s when we went with Good Shepherd and Refuge to the City of Hamilton. And we said we have a solution. We are going to create a program that everybody within the shelter systems are going to be moving out in a very short period of time. So not only we moved everybody out of the shelter system, we housed in less than two months, and we also helped them with their employment journey.”  

“The way we work is we ask them [clients] to lead and we support them, and we would be standing beside them. And through this journey, we even assign a social worker, a case manager with them, to help them with all the challenges that they’re going to face in their first year in Canada, providing those wraparound supports.” 

“I think we have to acknowledge that homelessness has a lot of causes that lead to someone who’s losing their home and not able to go back and be housed. So I think that’s very important. And the way Wesley works, we want to start with dignity and low barriers. 

“Wesley usually raises its hands when the most marginalized individuals need help. For example, the special care unit is for folks who are chronically homeless dealing with addiction.  And there’s no other place for them to go. We want them to come to Wesley because we want to create that wraparound support for them.”