The Future of Our City Series
What’s Gender Got to Do With It?
Examining the intersections of rebuilding our city & what we can achieve
Check out the full Future Of Our City Series here
Sign up (for free) to join us on Thursday, June 11 as we host a conversation with City Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam (bio), the Executive Coordinator of the Toronto Community for Better Child Care Abigail Doris (bio), and MPP for Scarborough Southwest and the Official Opposition Critic for Early Learning and Child Care Doly Begum (bio). The conversation will be moderated by Leila Sarangi (bio), Director of Social Action Family Services Toronto and National Coordinator of Campaign 2000.
Learn more about how intersectional gender inequality plays out in Toronto, its disproportionate impact on working class and racialized people, and how this has been exposed and worsened with the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve seen this most recently with personal support workers, nurses, grocery store workers, and others on the front lines in our city.
Then, find out what rebuilding our city with an intersectional gender lens means and what we can achieve if we organize now.
In this talk, we will touch on gendered work, policing, people without status, child care, and much more.
Thursday, June 11, 2020
7:30pm ET
This online conversation will be hosted on Zoom and the link will be provided with registration
This is a free event, but we welcome donations to support our work for a bold, just, and green recovery. You can donate by clicking here.
Register Below:
About our panelists and moderator:
MPP Doly Begum
Doly Begum is the Ontario NDP Member of Provincial Parliament for Scarborough Southwest. She moved to Canada as a child with her parents and younger brother, and has lived in Scarborough most of her life.
Doly was the chief coordinator of the province-wide Keep Hydro Public campaign that successfully stopped the privatization of Toronto Hydro and Wasaga Distribution. She is the former Co-Chair of the Scarborough Health Coalition and Vice-Chair of Warden Woods Community Centre, where she worked hard to make lives better for the people of Scarborough.
Doly is a graduate of the University of Toronto and has a Masters in Development, Administration & Planning from University College London. She was elected to the Ontario Legislature in June 2018 and is the first Canadian of Bangladeshi origin to hold elected office at any level in Canada.
At Queen's Park, Doly is the Official Opposition Critic for Early Learning and Child Care and also serves as Deputy Whip.
Abigail Doris
Abigail Doris is the Executive Coordinator of the Toronto Community for Better Child Care. She is a Toronto-based Registered Early Childhood Educator and child care community advocate with diverse experience working with young children, families and communities across Ontario. Previously, Abigail served as a Project Officer for the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care’s National Network on Early Learning and Child Care Human Resource Innovations and Decent Work project.
Moderator: Leila Sarangi
Leila Sarangi is the Director of Social Action at Family Service Toronto and the National Coordinator of Campaign 2000, a pan-Canadian movement to end child and family poverty. With over 20 years of front line, research and policy experience, Leila understands that the people experiencing the most significant barriers are often the furthest away from decision making. Her professional experience demonstrates commitment to connecting lived reality with public policy, advocating with and engaging people in a meaningful way to inform policy and legislative changes.
Leila started her career as a front-line crisis counselor in the women’s shelter system and in community development initiatives in neighbourhoods across Toronto, and has since held management roles in several community organizations. As a community builder, she has worked intentionally to create spaces for people with lived expertise of poverty and violence to direct and participate in social action of all kinds. She uses an intersectional gender equity lens to think critically and strategically, work with diverse communities, engage the media, and successfully impact public policy.
Leila is a recognized leader in influencing the City of Toronto to integrate an intersectional gender analysis to its policy work. Her long-term efforts, which included facilitating the participation of 2000 diverse low-income women and gender-diverse people in the public process of developing Toronto’s Poverty Reduction Strategy, contributed to the creation of the City’s Equity Budgeting Review process and the approval of a Gender Equity Strategy and Gender Equality Office at the City of Toronto.
In addition to her gender equity work, her social action leadership and research experience spans a variety of issue areas including police accountability, poverty law, poverty reduction, housing and homelessness, gender-based violence, and immigration.
An avid city cyclist, Leila lives, volunteers and raises her three children in Parkdale, Toronto.
Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam
Kristyn Wong-Tam was elected to Toronto City Council in 2010 and has an extensive career investing in the city through both the public and private sectors. Her contributions have led to the development and support of improved social planning programs, new affordable housing, innovative economic development programs, community art projects, and investments in diverse, family-friendly neighbourhood planning. She has led efforts to defend the rights of tenants to obtain affordable and decent standards of rental housing and helped create a neighbourhood association to preserve and protect heritage buildings and historical landscapes in the ward.
Kristyn is currently the vice-Chair of the Toronto Board of Health and Chair of the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee, which provides advice to City Council on the identification, prevention, and elimination of barriers faced by people with disabilities with the goal of achieving social, cultural and economic well-being. Kristyn is a founding board member of the Toronto Biennial of Art and was voted Toronto's Best City Councillor by NOW magazine readers four years in a row (2015-2018).