By Sheldon Spackman

Making a Life in Central Alberta: Voices of Immigrant Women

Apr 7, 2018 | 3:55 PM

An exhibition highlighting the experiences of immigrant women to central Alberta is now on display at the RDC Library.

The photovoice exhibition called ‘Making a Life in Central Alberta: Voices of Immigrant Women’, is the result of a joint project between RDC’s School of Arts and Sciences and Central Alberta Immigrant Women’s Association (CAIWA).

The exhibition follows a three-year research project led by Sociology instructors Dr. Choon-Lee Chai and Dr. Krista Robson and assesses settlement programs and services for immigrant women in central Alberta.

The hope is to learn more about the women’s experiences and needs and identify strengths and weaknesses of settlement programs and services.

With that in mind, immigrant women who took part in the research took photos to represent important aspects of their settlement experiences. They also took part in interviews and talked about their photos while telling their stories of settling and making a life in central Alberta.

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These stories speak of optimism, ambition, achievement, love, family, children, faith, friendship, new opportunities, new discoveries and everyday life in central Alberta. They also speak of underemployment, social isolation, discrimination and service gaps that newcomers strive to overcome.

Dr. Chai says the initiative has been a good way to introduce students to some of our social issues.

“It’s a way for them to learn about their community, the citizens in this place and some of the challenges they face and how we can make life better for some of the community members here,” explains Chai. “It’s to improve the programs and services for immigrant women who make central Alberta their new place of residence.”

Chai adds that allowing immigrant women to have control of the research in terms of process, what photos are taken and what stories are told has also been key to the project’s success.

Halima Ali, CAIWA Executive Director, adds the good work that has come from the project and the women willing to share their stories has been a nice surprise.

“We know only a little about the challenges and the barriers they are having,” says Ali. “But what we try as an organization, we know our responsibility. We know that we are there to do whatever we can do to support them. We don’t have even a drop of the help that they need because they need a lot.”

With that in mind, Ali says they are certainly grateful for the support they receive from program funders like the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

“As an organization and as immigrants, we always want to share our stories with the community but we narrate their stories,” explains Ali. “This time, it’s them showing and narrating their story. That’s the difference this time.”

Tabitha Phiri, Research Project Coordinator, says the experience has shed some light on what services immigrant women have been unable to access up to this point because of certain barriers.

“English, if they can’t speak English and culturally competent programs,” explains Phiri. “We wanted to make sure that we actually do the research so that we could have the actual results.”

Phiri points out however, that local settlement service providers also have some strengths to make note of including the efforts being made to simply reach out to immigrants.

“The services are available to anyone,” states Phiri. “Although it’s difficult for immigrants to go because of certain limitations and certain barriers that they have but otherwise, the strength is that the services are there.”