Stepping into Righting Relations and the Sustainable Development Goals

By Lynn Sutankayo, Project Development, JHC

When I joined the JHC team in 2018 as a part-time contract grant writer, I was blown away with the breadth of the Centre’s work. I spent hours reading through project reports, watching videos, and pouring over guidebooks, lesson plans, and their published research. One of the first events I was invited to was an orientation session for a group called Righting Relations. JHC has played a large role in the development of this national network, as well as its Western Hub in the Prairies. Eager to jump in, I learned this event was women-led, was for adult educators, was free, and was going to be held at the Botanical Gardens outside of Edmonton. I arranged for a babysitter for my little ones and off I went. (By the way - RR is great about childcare and will arrange with advanced notice!)

It was a cozy, informal gathering with chairs and tables arranged in a circle. I immediately recognized people I knew, as is generally the case when you live in Edmonton long enough :) As an adult educator and a community-development-kind-of-person, I was at ease, and in my element. The skilled facilitators led us through an activity “Challenging our Narratives of Canada”, where they visually presented  lesser-known facts about Canada’s history to get participants thinking about inclusion, multiculturalism and human rights. We had also been invited, prior to the event, to bring an artifact representing our own history. The activity, in popular education style, evoked reflection from the participants - how do we relate to this history? How does it relate to our identity? How does this knowledge impact our work? I remember meeting some pretty cool women at the event for the first time, not knowing how I would come to work alongside them in the next few years. I met Roxanne, a fierce disability rights activist, and Ruthann, a leader in promoting psychological safety in workplaces. And, I learned about the struggles and resistance of women - those that identify as white, as women of color, as immigrants, as settlers, and beyond - that I had not heard before, despite some even being colleagues or friends. I came to know that Righting Relations is a place for people who are working in areas of social change to meet to share their experiences of doing the work. We will talk about the hard things and we will have empathy for the personal stories layered upon the challenges of the work. We also gain support, inspiration, and wisdom from the group, which is held in a circle process to ensure everyone can be seen and heard.

What is Righting Relations?

Righting Relations is a heart-led, national network of adult educators and community organizers working for radical social change in Canada through decolonization and popular education. In 2016, Righting Relations Canada was born from the identified need to support adult educators and community organizers across the country who felt isolated and burnt out, to provide the space and resources for them to reflect on and improve their social justice work. Since then, Righting Relations, with the financial and administrative support of the Catherine Donnelly Foundation (CDF), has built regional and local hubs and networks in the East, West, and Central regions of Canada that are actively working together.

What is RR West hub?

The West Hub is the prairie regional division of Righting Relations, and consists of membership from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. 

The West Hub has had seven years of defining a set of values, ways of being and working together and used strategies to leverage its work while learning from each other and moving our work forward into new and pressing areas, including racism-based inequality, poverty and food security. The West Hub has developed a structure that allows members to work within their city Circle, be part of the Steering Committee, and collaborate with other Circles within the Hub (Pauchulo, JHC, 2001). 

Several of the women I met at my first event have been active participants and leaders in the West Hub for several years now. They have made real differences in their communities, from supporting youth in Regina to establish a cultural learning initiative, to supporting the Sage Clan in Lethbridge in their community safety initiatives. They have discussed and created actions around disability rights, violence against Two-Spirit peoples, women and girls, lack of housing and poverty, climate change and the environment. 

Righting Relations and SDGs

In 2017, I was lucky enough to attend and present with a group of colleagues at a Conference in Edmonton titled Together 2017: Collaboration, Innovation, and the Sustainable Development Goals, hosted by the Alberta Council of Global Cooperation. Serendipitously, I was excited that one of my first tasks with JHC was to work with the team to respond to a call for proposals from the Sustainable Development Goals Funding Program. A year or so later, JHC, alongside RR Canada and RR West Hub, formally began our project, “AGENDA 2030: Calling our Communities to Action in the Prairies.”  JHC’s aim with the project is to focus conversations that unite Canadian individuals and organizations around the SDGs, including local grass-roots initiatives in the Prairies and national capacity building efforts through RR Canada. Using a human rights approach, our initiative was designed to address SDG1: Zero Poverty, SDG2: Zero Hunger, SDG5: Gender Equality, SDG10: Reduced Inequalities. Building upon JHC’s human rights work, we wanted to increase the capacity of the RR Network, and beyond, to communicate and enact innovative models and practical solutions for resilience against poverty and food insecurity, including Indigenous food security and allyship. We knew that Prairie organizations were already engaging in dialogue and sharing practical solutions to support Indigenous Food Security, and the SDG project helped to support workshops, communications, and multi-media education and engagement activities. 

Early in the project, JHC and the West Hub accomplished a number of their key activities:

Together, members from the Regina, Winnipeg and Edmonton Circles have implemented an online survey distributed nationally to understand people’s experiences with food insecurity, as well as strategies they have seen used or have used themselves to address this issue (e.g., community gardens, free pop-up pantries). They have hosted online conversations with local partners with the aim of advancing discussions on food justice, including one on international food systems and one on food dehydration. They have completed the drafting of a Calls to Action Report and are planning more conversations and stakeholder gatherings to invite local partners to share their successes and challenges with food justice and food security initiatives while building strategies for radical change (Pauchulo, JHC, 2021).

Now, moving into our third year, the West Hub continues to educate and host dialogues on food sovereignty in concert with Righting Relations Canada. For example, this pastcoming Saturday, February 5, 2022, the Grandmothers of the West Hub will facilitated an online talk on “The Three Sisters of Food Crops.” The theme, Righting Relations with Food, has also focused the topics of both a podcast and webinar series. Righting Relations Radio has for the past two years explored issues of food sovereignty and sustainable development with guests from across the country, and highlighted how to make changes to Canada’s food system. Their most recent episode featured Righting Relations member and community organizer, Najia Zewari, who shared her experience facilitating the Gull Khanum Community Cooking series, and the importance of knowledge-sharing spaces in the pandemic-era food sovereignty movement. Another episode featured co founder of Buffalo People Arts Institute, Joely BigEagle Kequahtooway, who discussed food sovereignty in relation to her organization’s mission is to bring back the buffalo mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally, Complimenting the podcast project is Righting Relations Canada’s own YouTube webinar series, Righting Relations with Food. Online workshops, complete with transcripts, feature speakers such as Michelle Brass, who educates on topics of Indigenous food security and sovereignty, and climate change, linked with Indigenous health and wellness and  community well-being.

Shift to Online

As mentioned earlier, Righting Relations uses a circle process to host meetings and gatherings. Prior to COVID-19, city circles met monthly in person to sit in circle, often accompanied by the warmth of food and friendly conversation. Yes, moving online can makes connection more challenging. Yet, RR continues to hold meetings online, and has found new ways of working. In the absence of face-to-face conferences and workshops, where so much of adult education is usually placed, the online learning that RR makes available for free, is quite remarkable. Often, those untold stories of small, grassroots projects are limited to a community, or maybe a city. Through this network, adult educators and organizers still get to learn from each other, not just through information, but through relationships, much like my first meeting at the Botanical gardens in 2018.

For some members, online actually works better attendance-wise, such as those with mobility challenges or those with young children (like me!). So, when the idea of an online book club came up I thought, sure, I can commit to that! Stay tuned for my next post, where I will share a bit about the West Hub’s reading of Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer.