The KAIROS Steering Committee is pleased to announce that Aisha Francis has been appointed as Executive Director of KAIROS effective May 17, 2021. Aisha is a seasoned professional with twenty-five years of diverse leadership and business experience across the private, corporate and non-profit sectors. Called upon as a thought-leader, creative visionary and prolific speaker, Aisha is also an author who has the gift of connecting narratives, experiences and ideas seamlessly with structure and strategy to energize, motivate and inspire purpose-driven action and achievement.  

While there is much to be encouraged about in Federal Budget 2021: A Recovery Plan for Jobs, Growth, and Resilience, as always, much more must be done to fully bring about the transition to a just and sustainable Canada and global community.

KAIROS is celebrating 20 years as an ecumenical justice organization! We need your help to mark this anniversary, celebrate this milestone, and look towards the future, our future as KAIROS, over the next 20 years. Find out how you can participate!

The federal government’s plan to grant permanent residency to more than 90,000 temporary foreign workers and international student graduates is long-awaited welcome news. Unfortunately, because the plan applies only to individuals with valid work permits, it means thousands of undocumented workers remain in limbo.

Migrant farm workers need our support this year more than ever. Please join our online Ecumenical Meeting to Support Migrant Workers. This is a call to churches to learn more about the people who help to grow our food and a few outstanding initiatives. Find out how to help your migrant worker neighbours!

The impacts of the mining industry in Brazil are best known by the major tailing dam bursts in Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (2019). But well before and since these breaches, the mining industry has been a source of afflictions and human rights abuses. Please join us on Monday, May 31 at 5pm EDT for the public launch of MERE Hub Brazil: Women Defending Land and Water in Brazil.

The international Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination & Liberation hosted the April session of the Women Resisting Extractivism Film Club. More than 70 people gathered online to watch the documentaries Ground Zero and Imaset about the impacts of large dam projects on Indigenous communities in the Philippines. 

As reported by the UN Commission on the Status of Women, gender-based violence has increased dramatically in the last year, particularly in Colombia. In this country alone femicides have increased by 175 percent compared to last year, with a total of 630 femicides during 2020. 

Acción Ecológica, together with the Union of People Affected by Texaco, the International Federation of Human Rights, and the Waorani community of Miwaguno, has launched a litigation process on climate change-induced human rights violations. While this is not the first time  a lawsuit has been filed in Ecuador over damage caused by oil operations—the Texaco case is the most famous. 

On March 30, Mining Watch Canada, along with 26 other Canadian organizations, sent a letter to Marc Garneau, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Mary Ng, Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade, asking them to make a formal public statement condemning the violence against land defenders peacefully resisting the Escobal mine in Guatemala that is owned by Vancouver-based Pan American Silver.

Originally appeared in The Hill Times.

The federal government likes to say it has adopted a “distinctions-based” approach for dealing with the myriad of issues facing Indigenous people in Canada. We have other words for it, like contrived, or colonialist, or just plain sexist.

KAIROS actions to build a better world, such as e-petitions, letters to elected officials, and advocacy events are housed on the KAIROS Advocacy page. Take action today!

Register today for a KBE Teaching & Sharing Circle. These Circles are interactive, Zoom-based sessions that build positive relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people through truth, sharing, and open dialogue. This summer, six public sessions will be offered:  

·       Medicine Wheel Teachings (new topic!), Tuesday, May 18, 7pm-9pm EDT

·       The Impacts of Residential Schools, Tuesday, June 1, 7pm-9pm EDT

·       Métis Teachings, Tuesday, June 15, 7pm-9pm EDT

·       We are All Treaty People, Monday, June 21 (National Indigenous Day), 7pm-9pm EDT

·       Social Injustice in the Court System, Tuesday, June 29, 7pm-9pm EDT

·       The Importance of Growing Gardens, Tuesday, July 20, 7pm-9pm EDT

Fee: $25 per session. 

The KBE team worked hard over the past year to adapt the KBE for the online world and in January 2021 the virtual KBE (vKBE) was launched. To date there have been more than 100 deliveries and we are booked into September. 

To meet demand, the next round of facilitator training for each of the three vKBE roles – lead facilitator, co-facilitator and chat moderator – will begin in May. Additional trainings, including for sector partners, are planned for the summer and fall. We want to thank everyone for their patience and understanding as we work through the strategic training plan.

Join KAIROS’ MERE Hub on Thursday, May 20 at 7pm EDT for the fourth installment of its virtual film club on the gendered impacts of resource extraction. The film night’s host is Tasheena Sarazin, an Algonquin artist with roots from Pikwàkanagàn First Nation and Bear Island. Tasheena chose Firewater Thunderbird Rising, an Anishinaabe Dance Film by Christine Friday as well as a film by Penny Couchie. A Q&A with Tasheena and Christine will follow.

Join justice-minded Christians from across the country as we explore how we are called to seek justice together through intersectional, interpersonal, and interconnected approaches.

Through a variety of keynotes and workshops, participants will explore living examples of what it looks like to seek justice as people connected to one another and to the lands in which we live. We will consider how our identities, histories, systems, and geography shape our experiences of power and privilege, and how this informs the ways in which each of us are called to seek justice together.