Fellowship 2020—Here We Come!
This blog was written by Aslam Bulbulia, Fellowship Co-Host. On May 8th, 2019, the RADIUS team had the privilege of learning from the Raven Institute who came to our classroom
December 9, 2019
Located on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh, the RADIUS Fellowship has existed since 2015 as the premier professional development opportunity for emerging social innovators from across the Metro Vancouver region. The Fellowship aims to create a space for self-inquiry, personal and professional development, and relationship building.
During this intensive four-month experience, cohort members meet on a weekly basis to build relationships with their peers, learn from people working towards change in their communities, and explore strategies for social change.
Our hope is that the individuals who engage in the Fellowship program will leave with a deepened capacity to affect mindful, positive change in the system(s) they’re working in all while being supported by an enhanced community of collaborators.
We are looking for the next generation of untamed social innovators who are early in their changemaking journey and who demonstrate a relentless dedication to creating positive, sustainable impact in their communities.
Ideal Fellows are those who want to make a four-month commitment to developing their leadership capacity, building their professional networks, and generously supporting their peers. A curious and collaborative mindset and an ability to socially locate oneself within systems are prerequisites.
The Fellowship program suits recent alumni and young professionals who self-identify as community changemakers, social innovators, or social entrepreneurs. It is designed to be complementary to someone studying or working full- or part-time, with predominantly evening sessions.
RADIUS welcomes applications from Fellows who are engaged in any area or sector of work. That said, we do have particular areas of expertise and deeper network connections in the areas of our Labs: Health Promotion, Indigenous Entrepreneurship, Refugee Livelihoods, and the Future of Work. We are also well-oriented to the Future of Education given our work within SFU.
LOCALLY INVESTED
Intended to identify, profile, support, and catalyze emerging social innovators, the Fellowship will help foster the support, skills, tools, and community needed to create deep social impact and pursue work with purpose.
The Fellowship aims to support local social change and innovation through investment in the next generation of leaders’ development. It intends to support critical thinking around some of the pressing issues facing communities, networks of support, and relationships necessary for realizing shared visions and spaces of creative imagining for a just and sustainable future.
RADIUS Fellows will:
Weekly sessions: Tuesdays 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm; February 18 – June 16, 2020
Retreats:
Opening Retreat: Saturday and Sunday, February 29 – March 1, 2020 (overnight); location TBD
Mid-Point Retreat: Saturday, April 18, 2020; location TBD
Graduation Celebration – Saturday, June 20, 2020; location TBD
Commitment: 25 hours per month
Costs: Thanks to the support of our funding partners, we are able to offer a sliding scale fee to ensure accessibility (ranging from $500 to $5000 + GST, paid in up to 4 instalments). We aim to make this program accessible and realize the $500 minimum is not feasible for all. Full bursaries are available.
In solidarity with the people who have stewarded this land since time immemorial, we encourage applicants from Coast Salish Nations to apply for a full bursary.
Accessibility: Most of the Fellowship sessions will be held at the RADIUS Classroom in the SFU Charles Chang Innovation Centre. Sessions will be conducted in English and sometimes require pre-readings, videos, or podcasts. If you have any accessibility concerns, please feel free to inquire how best we can meet your needs at fellowship@radiussfu.com
APPLICATIONS NOW CLOSED
Aslam Bulbulia
Fellowship Co-Host
Aslam is a South African-Canadian Muslim, husband, brother and son new to unceded Coast Salish lands. He has been engaged in building community, hosting dialogues and reflecting on the links between decolonial practices in Vancouver and South Africa over the last 2 years.
Aslam is driven by a desire to see systems change happening at multiple levels for a more just future. His current work attempts to co-create containers that can hold multiple ideas of what that change could look like. He also enjoys stand-up comedy, hip-hop (in all its essence and real), gymnastics and a good book.
Laura Gaaysiigad Cuthbert
Fellowship Co-Host
Gaaysiigad hín uu díi kya’áang, ga yáalaast gúust uu díi k’wáalaagang, díi gwaayk’aang hlk’yáan ñ’ust’áan uu íijang.
I grew up in the sands of Brunette Creek in New Westminster, where I learned to skip stones, catch fish, and tread lightly on unceded land of the Katzie, Kwantlen, Qayqayt, sc̓əwaθenaɁɬ təməxʷ, səl̓ilwətaɁɬ təməxʷ, S’ólh Téméxw, Stz’uminus, and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm. The creek bed and city have been a connecting place for thousands of years, and I work to feel a part of those connections.
Those connections have been best felt when organizing in community around sense of place, isolation, language preservation, heritage reform, and Indigenous sovereignty. These connections have also woven themselves into roles and opportunities: as Curator and Co-Founder of Kudoz, Director of Organize BC, and Director of Populous Map.
I learned to use my Masters of Anthropology to document these connections, but I honour and evaluate them by sinking back into the creek’s soft sand. Reciprocity in community and home are what I innovate for.
Thanks, I’m happy to be here.
Nigel Mojica
Fellowship Co-Host
Nigel Mojica is a Filipino-Canadian artist, facilitator, and counselling psychology masters student born on Coast Salish territory. His recent work has largely been in mental health support, media and communications, social innovation, and the arts and culture. Nigel is currently a therapist in training at Adler University and is thrilled to be co-hosting the 2020 RADIUS Fellowship.
Creatively, Nigel is a hip hop vocalist, radio host, writer, event MC, and arts-based facilitator who works from a place of enjoying language, nurturing interpersonal connections, and inviting new (un)learning opportunities. His favourite pastimes include music, friendship, and being in or near bodies of water.
Leah Sanford
Fellowship Support
Leah is the Associate Director for the Education and Training Programs at RADIUS. Her leadership includes community and government partnerships on social innovation lab projects, social innovation education and training activities, and oversight of RADIUS social venture development, curriculum, and facilitation.
With over 20 years in the business, community, and educational sectors, Leah’s big-picture dream is to see innovation and creativity embedded into every corner of these sectors, while centering justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. She has experience as a director, program manager, facilitator, faculty member, and consultant and has led the development, implementation, and assessment of multiple major institutional projects. Her work experience, research & publication areas, education, and passions are all grounded in understanding and advancing social innovation, equity, social-justice, intersectionality, and anti-racism.
Leah is a bi-racial, cis-gendered woman who has spent the past 10 years raising her amazing daughter and working on the unceded territory of the Syilx (Okanagan) peoples. Her career and family has brought her back to the unceded Coast Salish Lands, and when she is not working, you can find her spending time with her daughter, exploring the beautiful lands on which we live, and continuing her research and learnings on all things social innovation and social justice!
Vanessa Richards
Vanessa Richards facilitates participatory culture with a transdisciplinary arts practice.
Her focus cultivates the singular and community imagination towards positive social transformation. She has extensive experience devising and delivering engagement initiatives with universities, unions, cultural organizations, and health care providers.
Richards is the founder and choir leader for Van Van Song Society (known formerly as Woodward’s Community Singers), and director of Creative Together, bringing collective singing for deeper connections to ideas and people at conferences and gatherings.
Educationally she earned an MPhil in Creative Writing at Cardiff University and continues formal and informal learning in the realms of social change, innovation, equity, justice, and urbanism. She’s had poetry and critical works anthologized in the UK, Holland, United States and Canada. As a performer she has been nominated for a Jesse Richardson Theatre Award. In 2018, in her hometown, Richards was the recipient of the City of Vancouver’s Mayor’s Achievement Award.
Camille Dumond
Camille Dumond (she/her) is a somatic trauma therapist, conflict facilitator, equity trainer and consultant. She helps create the conditions for heart, courage and clarity to emerge in difficult inner and outer conflicts.
Trained in the Deep Democracy method, and with over 20 years of community-based experience integrating an anti-oppression lens into the day-to-day life of organizations, Camille brings a relational approach rooted in respect for the dignity and value of all people. She is a multi-racial, Indo-Caribbean first generation, diasporic woman of colour living on unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqeum peoples. She holds graduate degrees in Counselling Psychology and Conflict Facilitation. You can find her through her mediation, consulting and therapy practice, or in her work co-managing the Refugee Livelihood Lab with Nada El Masry at RADIUS.
Michelle Lorna Nahanee
Michelle Lorna Nahanee grew up in the Squamish Nation community Eslha7an between the mountains and the ocean. She is the creator of a life-size board game called Sínulhkay and Ladders and the founder of Decolonizing Practices, an organization committed to addressing the challenge of where to start within the enormity of decolonization, indigenization and reconciliation.
In 2017, Michelle completed a Master of Arts in Communication from Simon Fraser University where she wrote “Decolonizing Identity: Indian Girl to Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Matriarch.”
Michelle works within the intersection of class, race, culture and creativity focusing on social change through decolonizing facilitation, strategic communications and deep engagement. Michelle’s collaborations have influenced opinions, changed behaviours and mobilized community action.
Her current clients include Squamish Nation, Northern Shuswap Tribal Council, Yekooche, Calgary Foundation, City of Vancouver, HCMA Architecture + Design and Vancouver Coastal Health. Her past clients include Qmunity, Pivot Legal Society, Simon Fraser University and Vancouver Foundation. Michelle is the Board Chair for Kwi Awt Stelmexw and a Director for Pacific Association of First Nations Women.
Candice Day
Candice is the manager of the RBC First Peoples Enterprise Accelerator Program (FPEAP).
This program works in partnership with Indigenous-led organizations to co-create entrepreneurship programming that will best serve their communities. The FPEAP is committed to delivering entrepreneurship programming with an Indigenous lens, upholding Indigenous knowledge and worldview. Candice believes that an economy that is dynamic, just, sustainable, and resilient is one that supports and is informed by the wisdom of Indigenous entrepreneurs. She wishes to centre this wisdom and strength within the FPEAP, and work with partners who do the same. Candice brings a background in social enterprise development within urban Indigenous organizations to her role, as well as an MBA in Social Enterprise Leadership from the University of Fredericton.
Candice is of Secwepemc, Chinese and European ancestry. Growing up in northern BC has given her a deep appreciation for the wild parts of this province…and within herself 😉 She lives for exploring both while on her DRZ400.
Alexander Dirksen
A proud member of Métis Nation BC, Alexander has diverse experience as a strategist, facilitator and policy wonk.
Driven by a fierce personal commitment to decolonization, Alexander currently serves as Program Director for Community Knowledge Exchange, and serves on the board of Apathy is Boring, on the City of Vancouver’s Urban Indigenous Peoples Advisory Committee and on the Partnerships Committee of the Vancouver Foundation.
Alexander currently resides in Vancouver as an uninvited guest on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səlil̓wətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
This blog was written by Aslam Bulbulia, Fellowship Co-Host. On May 8th, 2019, the RADIUS team had the privilege of learning from the Raven Institute who came to our classroom
Guest blogger, Ravi Patel, is a member of the 2019 RADIUS Fellowship. In this blog, he examines which of the Fellowship sessions have had the biggest impact on him since
Stephanie Lam (second from the right) is a passionate lifelong learner with an interest in the intersection of public health, health promotion, and medicine. She is finishing her last few semesters
Connect with the RADIUS Fellows – changemakers on the leading edge of some of today’s toughest problems! You may know the amazing 2019 RADIUS Fellows, a group of emerging leaders from
If you have any questions, email the Fellowship Program Team at fellowship@radiussfu.com.
The Fellowship program is made possible by funding from the Beedie School of Business, Shaw, Scotiabank, and the Charles Chang Institute for Entrepreneurship.
