2018 Grant Recipients

Bad Date Coalition (BDC)

The Bad Date Coalition has provided safety tools and resources to sex workers and community agencies for over 11 years. The BDC’s core service is compiling and distributing printed Bad Date Booklets, an important safety tool for the sex work community. The term “bad date” is used to describe an episode of violence enacted upon a sex worker, as well as incidents of theft, refusal of payment, threats, rudeness, time wasting, harassment, aggressive behaviour, etc. Sex workers face many barriers to reporting bad dates due to stigma and criminalization.

Black Lives Matter Toronto Freedom School

BLM Freedom School is a three-week program for children aged four to ten years old, to respond to a lack of humanizing, self-affirming, queer-positive educational opportunities for Black children in the GTA. Freedom school provides an alternative setting for parents who do not feel that our children are being taught self-love, nor a passion for justice and liberation through formal education. The program is designed to teach children about Black Canadian and diasporic history, to engage children in political resistance to anti-Black racism and state violence through a trans-feminist lens, and to offer children an entry point into the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Butterfly (Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network)

Butterfly was formed by sex workers, social workers, legal and health professionals. It provides support to, and advocates for, the rights of Asian and migrant sex workers. The organization is founded upon the belief that sex workers are entitled to respect and basic human rights.

Caregivers' Action Centre (CAC)

The Caregivers' Action Centre (CAC) is a grassroots organization based in Toronto, Ontario, an active community of migrant caregivers supporting each other. We reach out to other caregivers to inform them about their rights at work and support them when their rights have been violated. Since 2007, we have been advocating and lobbying for fair employment, immigration status, and access to settlement services for caregivers through self-organizing, research, and education.

Coalition Building

Coalition Building is comprised of BIPOC and people who are trans, two-spirit and/or queer. We are a self-organized group of artists on the margins, using community organizing and creative expression to connect and give voice to problems that are unique to our communities. Our lives are intersectional and therefore our art is as well, with issues such as criminalization, colonization, and pacification allowing us to connect to the wider world. Everything we do is to support the communities that support us.

Education Not Incarceration

Education Not Incarceration is a team of educators, researchers, journalists, youth, students, parents/caregivers, and community organizers in Toronto. We have come together to address the school-to-prison pipeline, which criminalizes students and disproportionately impacts those who are Black, Indigenous, and racialized. We are committed to challenging educational policies and practices that compromise the safety and quality of learning environments for young people, as well as the equity and integrity of the education system as a whole.

Grassy Narrows Women’s Drum Group

The Grassy Narrows Women's Drum Group was formed in 2002 after Grassy Narrows’ opposition to logging became internationally known through a community-led blockade. The Drum Group raises awareness about the community's ongoing struggle to protect the land, water, air, wild plants and animals, and the Anishinabek. We work to empower our women and youth to take action in defence of our people and mother earth according to traditional responsibilities. We also keep the fire of our land-based culture burning through land use, ceremony, healing, and teachings.

Indigenous Land Defence Across Borders (ILDAB)

Indigenous Land Defence Across Borders (ILDAB) is a grassroots initiative that aims to coordinate efforts between Indigenous peoples for the defense of their lands against colonial practices of land confiscation, resource extractions and forced expulsions. To challenge the global process of colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, racism and patriarchy across colonized territories, ILDAB is partnering with members of No More Silence (NMS) to conduct solidarity delegations (from Palestine to Turtle Island and vice versa). The purpose of these delegations is to engage in educational exchanges to learn more about the colonial violence that is being experienced by Indigenous peoples across these geographies, and to develop political alliances and initiatives in the protection of Indigenous people lands, water and life.

Mashkiki Collective

The Mashkiki Collective is a knowledge revitalization project for Womxn, Two-Spirit, Trans, Queer, LGBIAP+, Non-Binary, Genderqueer, Bigender, and Agender community members who identify as Anishinaabe (Anishinaabe, Ojibwe, Chippewa, Saulteaux, Oji-Cree, Odawa, Potawatomi, Algonquin) and/or Métis. Through this collective, we aim to revitalize our land-based healing practices, reclaim our traditional roles as community healers in working with our plant medicines, and examine approaches to ecological restoration that are informed by our teachings, stories, experiences, and lived knowledges.

No More Silence

No More Silence (NMS) aims to develop an inter/national network to support the work being done by activists, academics, researchers, agencies, and communities to stop the murders and disappearances of Indigenous women. NMS is made up of Indigenous women and Two Spirits and their allies. We take our direction from cis and trans women working on the frontlines to end violence against Indigenous women and girls and Two Spirit people across Turtle Island.

OCAP

OCAP strives to develop the capacity of oppressed communities to confront injustice by demonstrating the power of collective action. Through direct action and casework, OCAP strives to build a mass movement capable of confronting the capitalist system while simultaneously fighting to seek redress for cases of individual injustice.

Odemin Giizis Indigenous Full Spectrum Doula Collective

Indigenous women and Two-spirit people form this growing collective working to provide the support we wish we had through birth, miscarriages, terminations, sexual health, trauma recovery, and parenting. We are parents or have direct lived experience that drove us to seek out this work and see the need in our communities for this kind of support.

Rethink 150

Rethink 150 is an Okanagan/Syilx-led awareness-raising initiative that prioritizes involvement from members of the Syilx Nation, while welcoming the collective efforts of both Okanagan and non-Okanagan. The idea for Rethink 150 emerged from the desire from Syilx community members to create an alternative narrative for the Canada 150 celebrations in 2017. Through conversations about the need to resist Canada 150, some members of the Syilx community expressed their interest to others—both Indigenous and settler—and the idea started to grow.

Sacred Seeds Collective (fka Mno Wiisini Gitigaanan)

Sacred Seeds Collective is a rural, grassroots, mixed-race Two Spirit (Queer & Trans Indigenous)-led sustenance sovereignty initiative located on shared traditional Métis, Anishinaabek, and Rotinosaunee (longhouse) homelands near the shores of Waaseyaagami-wiikwed (Georgian Bay), in Dish with One Spoon Treaty territory. We steward garden spaces on an Indigenous-owned and -operated farm in Simcoe County, as well as a modest sugar bush in Tiny Township, where we gather to share Indigenous earthwork knowledges, alongside growing traditional plant foods and medicines to distribute in community.

3R International

3R International works with racialized youth from disadvantaged backgrounds facing the Canadian justice system. We work with families of racially profiled youth who have criminal records and who do not understand anything about the Canadian justice system. We build the power of racialized communities by taking the time, through information workshops and a hotline, to inform as best we can the members of our communities.