Maytree Conversations

Cities evolve and are shaped by the people who inhabit them.

Immigration and the resulting diversity of its people are both a source of creativity and hold great potential, as long as urban leadership ensures full integration of the newcomer and long-time resident.

According to organizers of the conference “Urbanism Planning: An Instrument for Social Integration,” as cities become more diverse, policies and practices at the local level must be more inclusive. The process of integration is a shared and negotiated responsibility, it cannot be defined unilaterally.

The conference is organized by Spanish think tank MENARA, a project of Fundación Tres Culturas. It takes place in Almería, a city in the autonomous community of Andalusia, in collaboration with the Ministry in charge of Moroccans living abroad.

Within the last 13 years, the foreign-born population has grown ten-fold in Spain. In the province of the same name, Almería, the predominant group is Moroccan. Similar growth has been registered across Andalusia.

MENARA focuses on migration and the promotion of intercultural dialogue. Its mission is to understand the reality of Moroccan immigration in Andalusia and to generate intercultural dialogue, employing a number of strategies, including research. Through the creation of networks and the promotion of immigrant integration and belonging, the goal of the organization is to create cooperation and exchange between Andalusia and Northern Morocco.

This transnational conference is one of a series of meetings this year that have examined themes like the relationship between entrepreneurship or citizenship and diversity.

Presenters are focusing on good ideas and experience of city-led policies and practices – in areas such as urban planning, housing, public space and participation – that promote immigrant integration and maximize the potential of diversity in cities. The participatory event asks all attendees to debate issues and key points in the program (PDF).

Maytree was invited to participate alongside students, academics, immigrants and other international guests to share the Canadian experience of immigrant integration. We’re also bringing good practices in local immigrant integration drawn from Cities of Migration’s collection of over 150 stories from global cities, over 100 of them already published in Spanish.

The contexts may vary from city to city, but in substance, the challenge and opportunity of immigration and diversity are consistent, whether in Toronto or Almeria.

As a practitioner, bringing the experience of DiverseCity Toronto’s work to accelerate regional diversity in the Greater Toronto Area with practical interventions to promote diverse leadership, I expect to learn a great deal from the rich debate taking place in Almeria this week.

Related:

• MENARA: La relación entre “Urbanismo y Diversidad” objeto de análisis por la Fundación Tres Culturas en Almería
• Cities of Migration publication: Good Ideas from Successful Cities: Municipal Leadership in Immigrant Integration

Or, rather, cities learning from each other.

As we welcome the world to Toronto next week for our DiverseCity onBoard Learning Exchange, we are also sharing Good Ideas in immigrant integration from around the world.

Maytree’s Cities of Migration staff are in Baltimore at the National Immigrant Integration Conference (NIIC). This year, they brought copies of our latest publication, Good Ideas from Successful Cities: Municipal Leadership in Immigrant Integration.

Compiling nearly 40 international good practices from cities across Canada, the US, Europe and Australasia, Good Ideas showcases why municipal leadership on integration matters.

We’re sharing these good ideas for a simple and compelling reason. They’re examples of integration done well. They help fuel economic growth, spur innovation and talent renewal, create new knowledge, and promote an open, richer and more inclusive social fabric. Through ideas such as these, new forms of social, economic, cultural and political capital create benefits for thriving urban communities globally.

As Alan Broadbent, Chairman of Maytree, writes:

“Cities know and feel both urbanization and immigration profoundly. At the national and sub-national levels, urbanization and immigration are policy issues. At worst, they become xenophobic political issues as politicians stir fear of immigrants. At the municipal level, though, they are primary lived experience. And at the city level is where we find the political and community voices that embrace immigrants, knowing they bring strength, vitality, and innovation. So at the municipal level, in our cities and urban regions, managing the settlement and inclusion of newcomers is vital.”

Ratna Omidvar has spoken frequently about the essential and unique role cities have to play in the welcoming and successful integration of newcomers. As she says, “Cities are uniquely positioned to learn from each other and to import, replicate, adapt ideas… Done well, integration creates great benefits.”

The city government that understands this will ensure local, regional and national prosperity.

Related:

• Good Ideas from Successful Cities: Municipal Leadership in Immigrant Integration
• Alan Broadbent on cities and international collaboration
• The Three I’s of Immigration Integration
• Cities of Migration shares Toronto’s diversity experience with the world

by Hema Vyas, School4Civics alumnus

What does the transformed political map mean for urban issues? What does the changing face of Parliament mean in our increasingly diverse city region? Warren Kinsella, one of Canada’s most prominent political strategists and commentators led a multi-partisan discussion with members of Maytree’s School4Civics alumni. Many thanks to the School4Civics alumni for organizing this excellent and inspiring event!

On a steaming hot Wednesday in July, 60 people gathered to discuss one of the more shocking events of this past spring.

Warren Kinsella, Toronto-based lawyer, head of Daisy Consulting and Liberal spin doctor, led a discussion exploring how the federal election resulted in a Tory majority, New Democratic Official Opposition and a historically low number of seats for the Liberals. Depending on your party stripes, you were cheering, jeering or devastated in May, but I know of few people who were not stunned.

Kinsella’s insights regarding the power of (negative) campaigning, the extent to which election timing really is everything, and our party leaders’ styles led to a lively discussion.

One of the central themes that emerged was the alienation of Canadians from the democratic process. With voter turnout at 61% and youth voting estimated to be even lower, Kinsella mentioned that the lack of young voters determined federal election results.

But why were voter numbers so low?

Even with the high turnover of Members of Parliament this year, Ottawa is far from representing today’s Canada. In demographics, experience and style, there is often a gap between what we find compelling and who we see speaking to our needs in Parliament.

An unusually high number of us in the room had been candidates and campaign organizers but still talked about how tough it is to have influence without the usual establishment credentials. The heart of the issue is about getting your foot in the door and then stubbornly remaining in the arena long enough to make a change, any change in politics.

This past election has broadened the appetite for change: It will take both the political establishment’s willingness to adapt and our own determination to get involved for federal transformation.

Will politicians sacrifice outdated traditions to restore their own relevance in Canadian homes?

To a great extent, that’s up to us.

Related links:

• School4Civics
• Expect new faces on your doorstep: School4Civics provincial election Bootcamp
• How to diversify Toronto city council

Interested in tools to enhance diversity in your organization? Need to pitch diversity to your management, board, or leadership? Let us help.

Your strategic starting point

Ask yourself:

• How can you build diversity in leadership where you are?
• Who is represented within the corridors of power?
• Who is able to lead organizations, make decisions and shape the future?

Diversifying your leadership is not just the right thing to do, but it’s also a tool to fuel the region’s prosperity.

Ratna Omidvar – Why you need diverse leadership

Leaders signal who belongs and who does not. They provide role models. They are a powerful symbol, for future generations, of what they can and cannot aspire to become.

Diversity in leadership won’t happen by accident. We need to be deliberate and systematic. We need to develop and deploy strategies for making change. Networks matter. Who you know can even become what you know. Deliberately sharing networks expands opportunities in a key way.  Networks and training programs make core leadership skills accessible to the best and the brightest.  Those with access to power can transfer this to new, emerging leaders by becoming mentors.

Making the case for diversity in leadership

DiverseCity

Through the DiverseCity Counts project we dig deeper into relevant data to better understand the extent to which some organizations have made diversity a priority. The research and results may be useful for you.  Download Year 1 and Year 2 full research reports, summaries and video links for DiverseCity Counts – The Importance of Diverse Leadership in the Greater Toronto Area.

The Conference Board of Canada report The Value of Diverse Leadership (PDF) measured the impact of more diverse leadership and found that the benefits include:

• improved financial and organizational performance;
• increased capacity to link with new global and domestic markets;
• expanded access to global and domestic talent pools;
• enhanced innovation and creativity; and
• strengthened social cohesion and social capital.

Learn more about making the business case for diversity.

Don’t reinvent, learn from the leadership of others!

We’ve got 10 practical tips for diversifying organizational leadership (PDF). Each tip briefly tells the story of how one organization took advantage of diversity to become stronger, more representative of their community and better.

Dive a little deeper into some promising practices of organizations diversifying their leadership.

Download Diversity in Governance: A Toolkit for Nonprofit Boards (PDF) a comprehensive toolkit for you to use when working with boards on issues around diversity and governance.

Maybe you’re interested in going even further, replicating DiverseCity onBoard (a matching service for boards and diverse candidates), or you just want to learn more about how it all works? We’ve created a replication website with resources, a toolkit and more. The site includes a free toolkit and answers the following questions:

• How can I connect qualified members from under-represented communities to agencies, boards, commissions and nonprofits?
• What can I learn from Maytree’s DiverseCity onBoard program?
• Where can I find up-to-date resources and sample tools?

Maybe you need more research?

We’ve compiled some research, newspaper articles and other resources that explore various facets of diversity in leadership. This is a new but growing area for exploration. You’ll find research on why diversity matters and some specific research for business, nonprofits and governments.

Long live the conversation

Would it be useful to facilitate a conversation about diversity in leadership in your community or organization?

We’ve got a great starting point for you: Diversity Perspectives – A Manual for Leading Dialogue on Diversity in Leadership (PDF).

Find out more and watch some great leadership stories on the DiverseCity Toronto site. You can watch the growing series of videos on their own  or within the DiverseCity blog.

Get inspired with some DiverseCity stories

Alejandra Bravo, on DiverseCity School4Civics

Tina Edan, on DiverseCity Voices

Cathy Winter, on DiverseCity onBoard

Related Links

• Download the DiverseCity Year 2 Review (PDF).
• CBC Metro Morning series: Beyond Diversity
• DiverseCity: The Greater Toronto Leadership Project
• DiverseCity Knowledge Centre – Research
• DiverseCity Knowledge Centre – Ideas That Work
  
• DiverseCity Knowledge Centre – Why Diversity Matters

Imagine the flow of creative solutions if we could tap into the wealth of ideas and experience that our diversity offers? How many new jobs might we generate if we mined all the international networks at our disposal? What if we became the top choice for the best and brightest from around the globe? What would happen if our public institutions truly reflected all of us? And what a shining future we would have if every young person had a role model to point them forward and prepare them to lead. Innovation, world markets, global talent, social cohesion – all of these are within our grasp.

In 2008, Maytree and CivicAction launched DiverseCity: The Greater Toronto Leadership Project. We knew then that accelerating the diversity of our region’s leadership will create a city region where we all prosper and thrive. Today, we know it’s an essential piece of our region’s prosperity.

As you can see from our just released Year 2 Review (PDF), we have already accomplished many of our original goals ahead of schedule.

Highlights include:

• DiverseCity onBoard, a program to match diverse individuals to governance positions on public and nonprofit agencies, boards and commissions, has surpassed its goal of 500 appointments (with 524 to date!);
• DiverseCity Fellows has just announced its 2011 cohort of twenty-five rising leaders poised to take action on issues critical to the health and prosperity of the Toronto region;
• DiverseCity Voices spokespersons have shared more than 400 media stories from new sources and perspectives with mainstream readers and audiences; and
• School4Civics has trained 100 individuals who have volunteered in an election, by-election or nomination process. Twelve participants ran in the recent municipal elections and several are considering nominations in the upcoming provincial election.

But we’re not resting on our accomplishments. After the recent CivicAction Greater Toronto Summit, we are invigorated to work even harder and with even more partners and networks.

We have worked over the last two years to realize the promise of a stronger and more prosperous Greater Toronto region through a more diverse leadership. It makes good business sense. It builds community. It feeds innovation. It puts us at the forefront of global efforts to acquire, integrate and value the diverse leadership that will ensure our  region’s future.

We could not have done all this without the valued help of our Steering Committee and our 166 partners, all of whom are working towards our mutual similar goal of a strong, healthy and prosperous city region:

• building stronger public and private institutions through diversified leadership and governance;
• expanding our networks to attract and retain the best global talent;
• advancing our knowledge of the benefits of diverse leadership; and, finally,
• tracking and measuring our region’s progress towards these goals.

The Greater Toronto Summit showed us that many, many more of you share these goals. Find out where you fit and join us!

Related Links

• Download the Year 2 Review (PDF).
• Watch Mayor Naheed Nenshi speak at the Canadian Club, with John Tory’s remarks about the Year 2 Review
• CBC Metro Morning host Matt Galloway speaks to Maytree president Ratna Omidvar about the success of the DiverseCity onBoard program
• Globe and Mail: Diversity not reflected in leadership roles, group says
• CBC Metro Morning series: Beyond Diversity

If you’ve been following our weekly news review here, you will have noted a great deal of recent media coverage about the strategic importance of diversity here, here and here.

Some notable recent articles include:

• Leadership the key to inclusive workplace
• Diversity, inclusion ‘just good business’
• A business leader’s obligations to Canadian society
• Loblaw companies has a process to evaluate international education and experience

While the articles focus on diversity in the workplace, the key messages are common for any strategic approach to diversity:

• “One of the key things is always to have leadership commitment.”
• “The bottom line is that kind of commitment is just good business.”
• “The truth is we could talk about the benefits of diversity for hours. But I believe everyone in this room already understands the argument. We’ve all seen the business case. The challenge today is to increase the pace of change. And it all comes down to execution.”

Articles and media coverage like these can be insightful, inspirational and interesting. But how do we get there?

DiverseCity onBoard can help you to understand, and help others understand, why diversity in leadership matters. More than that, our Knowledge Centre will help you build a better understanding of the economic and social benefits of diversity in leadership and help make the case for diversity.

Visit the Knowledge Centre to find:

• Profiles of diverse leaders who have benefited from participating in the DiverseCity project;
• A collection of good practices from organizations and businesses that have successfully diversified their leadership;
• A summary of why diversity in leadership matters;
• A compilation of existing research, newspaper articles and other resources that explore various facets of diversity in leadership;

And don’t forget to watch this video, where Ratna Omidvar explains why you need diverse leadership.

• DiverseCity: The Greater Toronto Leadership Project
• DiverseCity Knowledge Centre – Research
• DiverseCity Knowledge Centre – Ideas That Work
  
• DiverseCity Knowledge Centre – Why Diversity Matters

Sonia Dong’s parents never called themselves environmentalists, she says, but they were committed adopters of the three Rs. Since her parents grew up with tight finances, they continued to be thrifty, using and reusing all available resources was a given as was composting and growing a thriving vegetable garden. So it wasn’t a surprise when Sonia chose a career in the environmental movement.

As a young, minority woman Sonia “fit a lot of those checkboxes, organizations like to check off about being diverse, and I didn’t necessarily want to be representative of all those groups.” While she had no interest in being a representative of a disenfranchised group, she did recognize that she could be a leader. Sonia took on the personal challenge of speaking on behalf of diversity within the environmental sector.

Some organizations she worked with made attempts to broaden their outreach to diverse audiences but had difficulties making inroads. Why aren’t people interested? they asked. Sonia knew that the problem stemmed from a lack of understanding of what was actually happening in communities. The green mindset was alive and well in diverse communities but many organizations are not tapped into this reality. “My parents weren’t part of the discourse,” she explains by way of example.

Sonia challenged the sector to ask itself: “Do we have programs and organizations and messages that are relevant and accessible and inclusive of diverse communities? Maybe we should also be listening to people who are from other parts of the world who have experienced very dire environmental circumstances and have a lot of experiences and knowledge that we could learn from and bring into the sector.” In this way, she has helped the Sustainability Network lead the way in diversity in the sector, including managing a major diversity project.

In the process she’s learned a lot about leadership and her identity as a leader. She credits DiverseCity onBoard and DiverseCity Voices with helping her “affirm my own leadership style. Being a quiet person, I always thought that I needed to be someone else to be a leader. But, I realized that I could lead in my own way.”

Watch and listen to Sonia in her own words (runs 4:42):

Related links:

• DiverseCity: The Greater Toronto Leadership Project
• DiverseCity Leader Profiles
• DiverseCity Knowledge Centre – Why Diversity Matters

Leaders play a pivotal role, and their impact is felt in everything from strategic decision making to organizational and community effectiveness and, ultimately, financial performance. Diverse leaders bring added benefits and unique capacities that, when realized, add significant value in both the public and private realm.

Five of the most important benefits of diverse leadership are:

• Improved financial and organizational performance;
• Increased capacity to link to new global and domestic markets;
• Expanded access to global and domestic talent pools;
• Enhanced innovation and creativity; and
• Strengthened cohesion and social capital.

(more, from the DiverseCity Knowledge Centre)

In this second video segment, Ratna Omidvar outlines why organizations need to think strategically about enhancing the diversity of their leadership:

“It’s important to look at diversity from a variety of perspectives… Why it is important is because of the demographic share, quite frankly, that this population [immigrants & visible minorities] has in our city region. In Toronto 43% of the population are visible minorities. In the city region, the GTA, it’s slightly lower. More than half of Torontonians were born outside of the country. It’s not just an argument for representation… we have to look outside what we know, what we think, our normal solutions to look for new ideas. I’m reminded of a quote of Einstein: “When we all look alike, then we all think think alike.”

(runs 3:27)

Related links:

• DiverseCity: The Greater Toronto Leadership Project
• DiverseCity Knowledge Centre – Why Diversity Matters
• DiverseCity Knowledge Centre – Research

As we move closer to our 500th board appointment, we’re going to take some time over the next few weeks to inform, educate and celebrate the impact of the DiverseCity onBoard program.

We’ll give you some background information about the program, including why it’s important, introduce you to some amazing board candidates on our roster, and tell you a bit about where the program is going.

DiverseCity onBoard is part of a larger, eight-initiative project, a partnership of Maytree and the Toronto City Summit Alliance. The program works to ensure that the governance bodies of public agencies, boards and commissions as well as voluntary organizations reflect the diversity of people who live and work in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

The program has been operating in the Greater Toronto Area since 2006. It connects qualified candidates from Aboriginal, visible minority and under-represented immigrant communities to the governance bodies of public agencies, boards and commissions and nonprofits.

DiverseCity onBoard staff personally interview applicants and offer support and governance training to ensure that organizations get excellent, qualified candidates to join their board.

While working hard to change the face of governance in the GTA, Diversity onBoard has also created a toolkit to help other communities replicate this successful model.

Related links:

• Diversity in Governance Awards
• Diversity research and reference materials
• DiverseCity: The Greater Toronto Leadership Project

The successful integration of immigrants is not simply a matter of individual efforts by newcomers to Toronto. It must be accompanied by the city’s will to make social cohesion a priority by engaging a range of stakeholders, and it requires action from many players. In other words, inclusion is a two way street.

In a cosmopolitan city like Toronto – where our residents speak more than 100 languages and come from 200 distinct ethnic groups – the integration of immigrants is critical. Toronto continues to be a city of choice for many newcomers to Canada with 49 per cent of our city’s population comprised of immigrants.

In light of our aging population and our declining birth rate, we’ll rely more and more on immigrants as a key resource for building and strengthening our city and country. By 2011, Canada will rely 100 per cent on immigration for our net labour market growth; by 2026, our net population growth will be derived from immigration.

Based on these imminent realities, we need to continue to effectively integrate new immigrants into our communities, especially if they choose Toronto as their home.

This is why Maytree incubates ideas and collaborates with many stakeholders on local practical solutions for immigrant integration. This is also why we are communicating and partnering with national and international organizations on solutions that work.

We know these initiatives have made a meaningful and tangible impact on Toronto. And they are gaining traction in diverse urban centres across Canada and abroad – many communities are looking to Toronto to lead by example.

A few key highlights:

Since the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council was launched in 2003 by Maytree and the Toronto City Summit Alliance, a range of successful projects have helped skilled immigrants integrate smoothly into the Greater Toronto Region labour market.

Now through the ALLIES project, a partnership with The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, cities across Canada are learning from – and adapting – the TRIEC model to set up their own, locally-led, immigrant employment councils. In Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Ottawa, Montreal, Waterloo Region, Niagara, London, Fredericton, Moncton and Halifax, a strong civic movement is building to ensure immigrants can put their international skills, education and experience to good use.

Toronto’s story of immigrant integration has also garnered the interest of civic leaders and policy makers from outside of Canada, from Sweden to Singapore to Spain.

The Mentoring Partnership is another successful program founded in Toronto in 2004. It has helped over 5,000 skilled immigrants navigate the local job market with guidance from volunteer mentors in similar professions.  Eighty three percent of mentees said their mentoring relationship made a positive difference to their job search.

Over 50 corporate partners from the private and public sector have been actively engaged in the program as a means to nurture their staff’s leadership capacity and to build cross-cultural competence in an increasingly diverse workforce.

Through a recently launched national initiative, urban cities across Canada – and as far away as Auckland, New Zealand – have implemented their own mentoring programs for skilled immigrants as well.

DiverseCity, another project launched by Maytree and the Toronto City Summit Alliance, supports and develops up-and-coming leaders from under-represented ethnic and racial groups to address their low numbers in senior leadership positions in the Greater Toronto Area. Other communities across the country are interested in learning how to ensure that institutions are governed by qualified leaders who are more reflective of their population.

Cities of Migration, also a Toronto-based project, is the first international initiative to connect communities in Canada, the United States and around the globe on issues of migration and immigrant integration. With existing partners in Germany, Spain, the UK and New Zealand, the project just began a new collaboration with The National League of Cities to exchange key learnings about successful integration strategies.

While Maytree has had a hand in shaping these projects and solutions, we have not developed these ideas alone. It is only with the vision, energy and innovation of key players including employers, educators, community agencies, media, civic leaders and government, that Toronto has moved the marker on immigrant integration.

This collaborative approach is yet another reason why communities around the world are looking to Toronto for inspiration.

Indeed there is still much work to be done in Toronto, but we have made measurable and marked progress.

For that, our city should be proud.

(This post first appeared on the Toronto Star blog “Your City, My City“).