Power of Storytelling - Canadian Multicultural Disability Centre

Annually from July to August we implement two sets of Tree of life workshops consisting of fifty youth. The first workshop takes place in July, and the second takes place in August.

Project Description

In this project we utilized the tree of life narrative intervention strategy to assist refugee and immigrant youth to overcome their pre-migration traumas and post-migration settlement challenges. The reason being that many refugee and immigrant youth feel marginalized due to the lack of culturally and linguistically appropriate programmatic intervention options and cultural incompetency in which post-traumatic stress disorder, culture shock, depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems can be misidentified as attention deficit disorder, emotional behavioral disorder, or learning disabilities. On the other hand, differences in language, dialect, culture, and religion can be misconstrued as behavioral, emotional, social, and mental health problems.

Goals And Objectives

The overarching goal of the project is motivated to:

enhance the strengths and resources to improve the capacity of the immigrant and refugee youth to develop coping strategies and skills to work through the difficulties that arise and to realize their dreams.

assist immigrant and refugee youth who are struggling against the odds, unfulfilled potential to retell their stories leading to self-transformation and get empowered to seek and access needed support, adopt active engagement behavior in preventive care consequently realize more productive lives. For example, reunite them with their families, going back to school and accessing gainful employment.