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DIA offers extended professional development to service provider organizations and their staff centered around specific needs assessment criteria to facilitate conversations and capacity development that is aligned to DIA’s mission to centre, elevate and amplify the stories of Newcomers and Youth.

Workshops

Workshops

  • Program co-design
  • Storytelling
  • Equity training

Research

Research

  • Participatory research
  • Developmental evaluation
  • Strategy development

Design

Design

  • Art installations
  • Events and programming
  • Storytelling artifacts

Coaching

Coaching

  • Nonprofit leadership
  • Social innovation and sustainability
  • Team dynamics and conflict resolution

About Our Workshops

Department of Imaginary Affairs is a national nonprofit. We seek, collect, and share stories of new and developing Canadians from coast to coast to coast. Every story helps us learn more about the people who live in Canada. Through our projects, we share these stories in the hopes of creating a nation of empathetic citizens, public services, and policies.

What Types of Workshops Do We Offer?

The Stories of Us is a program within Department of Imaginary Affairs. The Stories of Us is focused on building an ESL library of newcomer stories, online and offline, written by newcomers themselves. Our goal is to create ESL resources that are reflective of the diverse range of newcomer experiences across Canada. To this end, we work with newcomers through a series of scaffolded storytelling / storywriting workshops to unpack the stories that they feel compelled to share.

Storytelling Workshops

which invite individuals to write or tell their stories and learn to tell tell them more confidently.

Training Workshops

which help participants build their skills around research, co-design, foresight and collaboration.

Co-design Workshops

which facilitate shared learning, conflict mediation and/or the development of new solutions amongst the group.

What Are the Outcomes?

Our workshops create safe spaces where we are free to imagine a world that does not operate around existing systems. It is a place where individuals are welcomed to tell their stories, to bring themselves as they are and where we are able to challenge the assumptions and the expectations placed on us.

It was a kind of psychological work, because when we came to Canada we were very busy doing this and that. I never stopped to think about what I felt or what I was scared of. With this project, I stopped and I started to think. It was good psychological work.

– Workshop Participant

Before, I didn’t have enough speaking power to explain my feelings. Through these workshops, I learned lots of new words and my writing improved.

– Workshop Participant

My view of my story has changed because before I thought there was nothing interesting in my life, it’s monotonous. But after remembering each and every part, I realized that there are many good things that have happened to me.

– Workshop Participant

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