Yasmin Mawani

Building cross-cultural bridges in York Region

There was a time when Yasmin Mawani thought her son’s school had her telephone number on speed dial. She was constantly getting calls and her initial reaction was to blame her son. “My two boys went to a predominantly white school and as they were growing up, I realized my younger son got bored very easily. He’s a very intelligent child, but he was labelled a troublemaker. That was when I really started to get involved working with the schools,” says Yasmin.

Today her two sons, aged 24 and 26, are successful young adults and Yasmin is the Community Resource Facilitator for the York Region District School Board. Yasmin helps to enhance students’ learning experiences by connecting parents and students to community services such as health care, parenting classes, youth clubs and recreational programs.

This mother of two likes to use the word empowerment when talking about the needs of the rapidly growing immigrant community in York Region. Her desire to give all children regardless of colour, race or creed an educational experience that prepares them for a changing Canada, prompted her to devise an exchange program to build cross-cultural bridges between white students and students of colour.

Grade 7 and 8 students from a multi-cultural school in Markham partnered with a school in Newmarket where there were no children of colour. They started as pen pals says Yasmin, who arranged for teachers from the schools to set a curriculum so students could experience what it was like to be “in the others’ skin.” They visited each other’s schools and met their fellow classmates. The exchange culminated with a picnic together.

“At the end of the program, the students realized they have far more similarities than differences,” says Mawani. “It was a key learning experience for all students involved.”

Yasmin arrived in Canada from the United Kingdom with her husband and first child in May, 1980. Her second son was born in Toronto. Since arriving, Yasmin has dedicated much of her time to empowering immigrants.

As an Ismaili Muslim, she had been been involved in social causes since age 17 and she continued this work when she arrived in Canada. In the late 1990s, she chaired a project which involved a national study of women to determine what was hindering Muslim women from reaching their potential as contributors to society. Out of this initiative evolved programs to help women upgrade their language and computer skills as well as access child and elderly care support.

Her work with Muslim women continued with a project Yasmin considers her greatest achievement to date. In 2004 she co-founded Social Services Network for the York Region (SSN) the only registered charity created to meet the needs of the region’s South Asian community. It evolved out of the release in 2002 of a United Way study which pointed to the Chinese, South Asian and African Caribbean communities as the most underserved and fastest growing communities in York region.

Through partnerships with other community agencies, SSN facilitates the delivery of healthy living and parenting programs, settlement services, and access to women’s and youth clubs, and even yoga. Today SSN is a member agency of the United Way of York Region and receives funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation and the Ministry of the Attorney General.

“We carved ourselves a new model of service,” says Yasmin whose approach is to bring agency representatives into the community to connect with, in some instances as many as 500 people. She says SSN keeps her focused and motivated to continue her work as a social activist. Her volunteer and board positions include Kinark Child and Family Services, Canadian Cancer Society, and the Aga Khan Health Board amongst others.

“Life is not all about taking, it is about giving. We have to be stewards of this earth. Very little can be accomplished if you don’t work for social change,” says Yasmin whose vision of Canada is a country that sets a new standard for embracing diversity and pluralism.

“I would like Canada to be reflective of the community it welcomes at every level; that my children will feel welcome on any board of directors; that their children will have equal opportunity as those in the mainstream; and that each community will be reflected in all our governing bodies,” says Yasmin who hopes her contributions will help create this legacy for generations to come.

Yasmin participated in the 2003-2004 Leaders for Change program.