- by Cory Bilyea, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, first in Wingham Advance Times 12/28/20

HURON COUNTY – The equity, diversity and inclusion working group is developing a panel series to engage with rural audiences about racism.

Immigration Partnership Coordinator Kristin Crane presented a report to Huron County councillors on Dec. 16, updating them on the immigration partnership initiatives as they work towards actively challenging racism.

The four-part panel series’s development is to increase awareness of equity, humanize differences rather than ignore them, and understand what it means to be inclusive.

The series is called Humanizing our Differences and is in collaboration with Faux Pop Media. It will explore different community members’ lived experiences as racial minorities and immigrants, the report said.

The segments will seek to understand foundational concepts such as equity, unconscious bias, ethnocentrism, privilege, micro-aggression, and systemic racism.

An overview of the segments includes answering the question “why it matters in rural Ontario” and holding conversations about awareness, privilege, and equity.

The intended outcome is to stimulate community engagement in further action, influence people’s empathy and understanding of individuals with lived experience, and make it comfortable to have respectful conversations about differences.

It will provide education and allow people to acknowledge names and recognize the different terms shared in the series.

A collection of additional resources to extend the learning and continue conversations will be created by the Immigration Partnership in collaboration with Huron County Libraries. 

Additionally, the Immigration Partnership will offer an educational opportunity at the end of each segment to the community. Topics include learning how to recognize and correct biases, becoming an active bystander, how to engage in positive and healthy cross-cultural interactions, and how to be an ally. 

The first segment of the series is set to be released in mid-January. The remaining segments will be released bi-weekly, the last one scheduled to be released at the end of February.