Carolina Gajardo
Leading by example
Behind Carolina Gajardo’s warm smile and engaging eyes is a story of survival, one which fuels her commitment to right wrongs and protect the vulnerable. A former refugee from Santiago, Chile, Carolina beat the odds, surviving and eventually fleeing the violent rule of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Arriving in Canada in 1986, with her husband and their two children, Carolina left behind family and friends and brought with her several haunting memories of the kidnapping and disappearance of her first husband by General Pinochet’s secret police. Not long after she unpacked her bags at a downtown Toronto hotel, she embarked upon one of several initiatives that would later benefit thousands of refugees and immigrants in Canada.
Carolina and her family shared the Jamieson and Queen Street hotel with refugees from Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. She understood their needs and rallied around them, first organizing a group of women to visit food banks, teach themselves to use the transit system and collect survival information to share with fellow refugees.
Realizing more needed to be done, Carolina next pitched the idea of opening a refugee centre to representatives from the nearby Presbyterian Mission. “They asked me to put a proposal together. They funded it and I started my working life in Canada, seeing the future through my own experience,” she says.
Since then Carolina has counselled hundreds of victims of trauma, engaged in assessment and crisis intervention as well as developed support groups for refugees and immigrants. She has trained settlement, housing and shelter workers, cultural interpreters, teachers, doctors and government workers providing services to newcomers. In 1990, she joined COSTI Immigrant Services, working largely in the area of settlement, housing and language instruction for newcomers.
She now manages COSTI’s North York Housing Help program, which serves an average of 10,000 people per year, 80 percent of whom are women experiencing housing problems within the city.
Carolina had worked with women in crisis in Chile and says she has always found it difficult to stand by and watch when people are in need. “I was involved from a very young age in bringing awareness to the problems of the less fortunate and being involved in volunteer activities.” Before the coup d’etat in 1973, being engaged in civil society was part of the school curriculum, says Carolina.
Today as a citizen of Canada and a resident of Toronto, Carolina sits on a number of boards and committees dedicated to social justice, human rights, community development and newcomer settlement issues. They include the Canadian Resource Bank for Democracy and Human Rights, the City of Toronto’s Immigrant and Refugee Housing Task Group, Resources Exist for Network & Training (RENT), the Laidlaw Foundation, and the Canadian Council for Refugees.
She says she has learned much from her involvement. “One of the biggest lessons is that an individual can facilitate change only if he or she actively participates with others,” says Carolina. “Life has taught me that it is today that creates tomorrow.”
In an effort to assist refugees and newcomers now and in the future, Carolina co-produced a number of multi-lingual videos to orient them to Canada. Welcome to Ontario, an 8-part video series was translated into 22 languages and was used as a government-training tool in Ontario, Europe and Asia in the 90′s.
After more than 30 years of involvement in advocating for human rights and social justice, Carolina says that for her, leadership means always keeping one’s ego in check, maintaining a positive attitude and leading by example. “Leadership for me is being honourable and being an individual committed to your words and your work. That means, you challenge yourself every single minute, you honour your word, and your principles are manifested in everything you do.”
Carolina participated in the 2002-2003 Leaders for Change program.
