Yasmin Mawani: Building Cross-cultural Bridges in York Region

Building cross-cultural bridges in York Region

Excerpts: There was a time when Yasmin Mawani thought her son’s school had her telephone number on speed dial. She was constantly getting calls and her initial reaction was to blame her son. “My two boys went to a predominantly white school and as they were growing up, I realized my younger son got bored very easily. He’s a very intelligent child, but he was labelled a troublemaker. That was when I really started to get involved working with the schools,” says Yasmin.

Today her two sons, aged 24 and 26, are successful young adults and Yasmin is the Community Resource Facilitator for the York Region District School Board. Yasmin helps to enhance students’ learning experiences by connecting parents and students to community services such as health care, parenting classes, youth clubs and recreational programs.

This mother of two likes to use the word empowerment when talking about the needs of the rapidly growing immigrant community in York Region. Her desire to give all children regardless of colour, race or creed an educational experience that prepares them for a changing Canada, prompted her to devise an exchange program to build cross-cultural bridges between white students and students of colour.

Yasmin arrived in Canada from the United Kingdom with her husband and first child in May, 1980. Her second son was born in Toronto. Since arriving, Yasmin has dedicated much of her time to empowering immigrants.

As an Ismaili Muslim, she had been been involved in social causes since age 17 and she continued this work when she arrived in Canada. In the late 1990s, she chaired a project which involved a national study of women to determine what was hindering Muslim women from reaching their potential as contributors to society. Out of this initiative evolved programs to help women upgrade their language and computer skills as well as access child and elderly care support.

http://www.maytree.com/training/leaders-for-change/leadership-journeys/yasmin-mawani