#HamiltonForAll
Campaign to make city more welcoming to refugees, immigrants being launched today
Hamilton belongs to everyone. THAT IS THE MESSAGE of a new campaign called #HamiltonForAll.
The aim is to make the city more welcoming to immigrants and refugees, while encouraging people to take their own action to connect with newcomers.
“We really do want this campaign to show our most recent Hamiltonians we love them and we want them here,” said Nicole Longstaff, a senior project manager with Hamilton Immigration Partnership Council.
The first phase of the new public awareness campaign — a partnership between the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion, the HIPC and the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI) — is being launched Tuesday.
The campaign will include posters showcasing Hamilton’s diversity — as well as profiles of local newcomers who are “ambassadors” — on the hamiltonforall.ca website.
It will also encourage Hamiltonians to participate by sharing messages with newcomers through social media using the #HamiltonForAll hashtag.
“It doesn’t have to be serious stuff about settling,” said Yohana Otite, program manager at HCCI.
“It could be about sharing simple information like what park is the most interesting to take your kids.”
Creating a campaign to address discrimination faced by immigrants and refugees was one of the goals set out in HIPC’s strategic plan.
The timing of the local immigration partnership finishing up its strategic planning process lined up with last year’s American election and incidents of hate crimes in Hamilton, Longstaff said.
“Certainly racism and discrimination has always been there. But particularly in the last year-and-a-half or so … there seems to be a bit of an increase and people being a little bit more willing to speak out and say things or do things to newcomers that are unwelcoming,” she said.
Longstaff said they realized they needed to do something, but they weren’t sure exactly what until they learned about similar public education campaigns launched by Toronto and Ajax with the help of OCASI.
After it launches, the campaign ambassadors will be available to go to different events and neighbourhood meetings to share their stories, said Otite.
The hope is this will help people connect based on their commonalities instead of their differences, and show the value immigrants and newcomers bring to the community, she added.
“We kind of want to fight (stereotypes) and show the real value in what it really means to be a newcomer, to come to a new country and then try to be a part of the community,” Otite said.
Gabriela Covaci is one of those ambassadors.
The 49-year-old arrived in Hamilton from Romania almost 15 years ago. Since then she has worked with newcomers through volunteer positions and her job as an employment counsellor at Mohawk College.
To help all the newcomers reach their full potential.
Participating in the campaign offers Covaci a chance to share her journey with others, and hopefully offer assurance to newcomers that settling in a new country takes time.
“If you have a story. … If you can set an example for people around you, this is what people are looking for,” she said.
“I’m not saying it was an easy process, but I’m saying that it’s possible.”
The ambassadors are not the same individuals featured on the campaign posters — a decision arrived at based on research and advice from similar campaigns, Longstaff said.
“Someone might write something on it and then you might have a situation where a person who had given their approval to have their image used in the campaign may now change their mind,” she said. “There’s a safety aspect to our decision to not go in that direction.”
It could be about sharing simple information like what park is the most interesting to take your kids. YOHANA OTITE HCCI PROGRAM MANAGER