Acknowledging the Need for Diversity

SIRC was pleased to attend the meeting "Diversifying Your Board" hosted by Sport4Ontario at the Sport Alliance for Ontario. Diversity is an integral part of the Canadian landscape and that is no more evident than it is in Canada’s biggest city of Toronto. Almost half (44%) of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) residents are not native born to Canada, compared to 16% of the Canadian population as a whole.

DiverseCity onBoard is an organization that currently provides over 1500 qualified and pre-screened visible minority candidates in the GTA who are ready, willing and able to serve on an organization’s board of directors. Their statistics show that visible minority leadership in the GTA is 12.5% for board members in the voluntary sector and 4% of leaders in the corporate sector. To date, their program has linked over 500 qualified visible minorities and new comers to agencies, boards and commissions in the GTA. Because of their reach out ability and achievements, several provincial sport organizations have had the opportunity to use their services, with many more to come.

DiverseCity onBoard is the brain child of the Maytree Foundation who has the support of Citizenship and Immigration Canada. They have been working over the last two years to realize the promise of a stronger and more prosperous GTA through a more diverse leadership.

But first things first. As an organization you will need to establish a baseline acknowledging the need for diversity on your board by asking a few simple questions:

• Could a homogeneous board composition be limiting creativity, fundraising ability and vision?
• Are the demographics of your community being served?

Diversity does matter in business and in the business of sport, no matter how big or small you are. It assists in bringing a perspective in decision-making which leads to making better decisions, helps legitimize the mandate of an organization, and builds social capital and cohesion among diverse populations.

For more information on any of these topics please contact SIRC.

New Canadians Have New Opportunties

Statistics show that using sport is one of the most effective and fastest ways that New Canadians can assimilate into Canadian society. SIRC recently attended a “Sport and Diversity” session hosted by SPORT4ONTARIO at the Sport Alliance Building in Toronto, where three organizations presented on how they are expanding their services to insure that there are programs directed towards assisting New Canadians integrate into the rich Canadian sporting community.

The Coaches Association of Ontario (CAO) was awarded a grant from the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration and the Strategic Partnership Initiatives Youth Opportunities Program (SPIYOP). They are hosting 10 Coach Education For Newcomer Youth workshops in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) for newly landed Canadians ages 15-24, who are not currently attending school. The program provides an exceptional education in fair play, responsibility and safety, and child development phases, and each participant receives a coach workbook and resources, as well as a trained NCCP status in the national database. A great start to a new coaching life.

The Toronto Sports Council (TSC) was awarded a grant from True Sport to help increase the number of trained and certified youth sport leaders in the Jane-Finch communities in north Toronto. As a result, the communities will have a greater capacity to provide high quality sport programming opportunities for school age children.

And since soccer is such a global sport, most New Canadians arrive in Canada with a great amount of passion for the game already. The Ontario Soccer Association’s (OSA) “Soccer and Settlement” project connects New Canadians with organized, sanctioned soccer groups in specified communities and by doing so, they are linking communities and developing partnerships with other organizations that will serve to develop coach, referee and volunteer leaders for the future. Currently partnered with the Catholic Immigration Centre (CIC) which works with newcomers in the Ottawa area, they are connecting 66 soccer clubs in the nation’s capital with the OSA’s initiatives. The OSA is also creating a coaching program to train adult newcomers to coach or referee the game.

For more information on sporting programs for New Canadians, please visit SIRC.

Diversity in Sport

SIRC Newsletter now available online: Diversity in Sport

The Canadian sport community has the opportunity to embrace our uniquely diverse population and actively strive for a multicultural and socially inclusive environment. Proactive sport organizations adopt a broad view of diversity and value it to its fullest extent. Ideally, this means going beyond merely removing barriers to participation but working towards ensuring that all participants are valued and respected.

Read more:  http://www.sirc.ca/newsletters/mid-mar13/index.html