Black Leadership and Governance Project

Taking our seat at the table

TAIBU Community Health Centre, in partnership with University of Toronto Scarborough, East Scarborough Boys and Girls Club, and Alpha Alpha Delta Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., have devised a method of dismantling Anti- Black Racist barriers hindering the participation of Black Canadians at imperative decision-making tables. To that end the B.G.L.P. has created a Black focused curriculum for a Governance and Leadership Project, funded by the City of Toronto.

The main components of the Black Governance & Leadership Project include:

• Build the Capacity of Black led grassroots and emerging groups across Toronto on governance as a way of ensuring sustainability and community impact.
• Train and mentor individual members from the Black community and match them to opportunities of governance position with the objective of increase the participation of Black Torontonians on board and committees of health and social services providing agencies and organizations.
• Engage mainstream organizations in building their capacity of Anti-Black Racism awareness and moving from tokenistic approach of having racialized and marginalized voices on their governance and leadership position to a finding ways of changing process and power dynamics towards ensuring equitable representation to the benefit of the organization and the communities served. It also assists mainstream organization in developing an effective recruitment strategy to reach to Black and other racialized communities.

Before the advent of COVID-19 we had a scheduled event to bring Phase III of BGLP to the Toronto Board of Health. We were also in the planning stages to work with the Boards of Scarborough’s Anchor Institutions – Scarborough Health Network, University of Toronto Scarborough, Centennial College, Toronto Zoo.

BGLP is part of TAIBU’s strategic direction and operational plan to bring about systems change.