Scoping Statement & Purpose

“As grassroots newcomer leaders and process partners in Edmonton, we are exploring the future of the newcomer community safety and well-being ecosystem over 2025–2026. We believe that the most durable change in this space will come from within communities — collectively designed, shaped by lived experience, and built through experimentation rather than predetermined service design. Through this work, we aim to build the connective tissue and shared practices that allow grassroots newcomer-led organizations to respond together to the challenges they face, for the long-term benefit of intersectional newcomer communities. We seek to generate evidence and learning that benefits newcomers across Edmonton. We aim to design and create alternative processes, infrastructures, and ways of working that support taking action collectively and invite funders, local institutions, and other groups in the ecosystem to support grassroots leadership in new ways.”

The project replaces traditional, transactional granting processes with a collaborative funding approach that builds ecosystem-level solidarity. Rather than relying on predetermined service designs, CFRAC collaborates directly with newcomer leaders to identify, design, and run community-led Minimum Viable System (MVS) experiments that directly strengthen safety, belonging, and well-being.

Alignment with CFRAC: Grounded in Afrocentric and communal principles—such as collective responsibility, deep relationality, dialogue, and equitable resource distribution—this initiative pilots a participatory funding model. By shifting CFRAC’s role from a transactional fiscal pass-through into a relational process partner, the project works to dismantle top-down municipal grantmaking structures, shifting power directly to grassroots newcomer leaders.

Key Activities

• Career and Personal Development for Newcomers: Deploying a targeted five-person pilot to tackle isolation, culture shock, housing barriers, and professional hurdles through hands-on assistance, relational mentorship, career path navigation, and local community integration.
• Trauma Amidst Migration: Producing a series of 5–10 educational videos centering LGBTIQ+ newcomer experiences, addressing post-immigration trauma and PTSD, dispelling misinformation, and fostering collective community safety and well-being practices.
• Shared Meaning Rooted in Lived Experience & Art: Hosting an arts-based storytelling and narrative event to connect newcomers, grassroots organizers, and community activators around shared lived experiences.

Partners