Month: February 2016
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Learning about the Syrian crisis
The five year long Syrian Civil War is one of the largest conflicts in our world at this time. 250,000 dead (possibly more than 470,000 by some estimates), 6 million refugees, 11 million IDPs — the Syrian Civil war is a disaster and it doesn’t look to be ending soon. The Middle East is not…
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New support for refugees in Kelowna — CBC Daybreak South interview
The Okanagan Refugee Coalition for Advocacy (ORCA) is a grassroots organization that aims to support the activities of all the neighbourhood groups in the Okanagan sponsoring individual refugee families. On average, it takes about 12 people to provide all the social and moral support needed by a single refugee family. We call these sponsor groups…
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Are we a “hapa” family?
Family portrait by MAUD. In One Big Hapa Family Jeff Chiba Stearns investigates why there is such a high rate of interracial marriage (95%+) amongst Canadians of Japanese ethnic heritage (otherwise known as Nikkei). Through interviews with his family and other Nikkei in British Columbia, Chiba Stearns explores the historical experience of the Nikkei in…
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2 years of real-world OGO Carshare usage data
We don’t own a car and we live in an ostensibly small Canadian city (about 150K) and have two small children (6 and 4). Needless to say, we are pretty heavy users of our local OGO Carshare. We use it pretty much every weekend for outings and shopping, and once or twice a month we…
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Helping Syrian refugees
Out of 11 million people diplaced during Syria’s five year long civil war, more than four and a half million are languishing in camps in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon and other countries. Many have been in the camps for years. At the end of October 2015, our new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his intention…