Hello, this is Peter Levesque. Welcome to episode fourteen of the Knowledge Exchange Podcast. This podcast series is a product supported by the Canadian Council on Learning – Canada's leading organization committed to improving learning across Canada and in all walks of life. I want to thank the great staff at CCL for their efforts with this project to advance our understanding of effective knowledge exchange to improve the learning of Canadians. You can download this episode, as well as one of the six future episodes in the series from my website at www.knowledgemobilization.net, from iTunes directly, just search for KM podcast. Alternatively go to knowledgeexchange.podomatic.com.
Khan Rahi is a well known community activist and researcher. He works with some of the most vulnerable people in Canada's largest city. His use of research evidence to support the development and implementation of practices and policies is a great example of how evidence supports political changes and community improvements. The use of multiple modes of communication and the need for people to carry messages through oral channels is a reminder that, even with the growing trend towards technology, people still look to each other for knowledge and leadership. Although there is lots of background noise in the restaurant where we met, I think there is a strong signal coming from Khan; let's be transparent, clear, blunt about the issues we are dealing with and then let's work together to implement solutions. That is really what knowledge exchange is about – isn't it? Peter: So I'm here at Acropolis on the Danforth in Toronto with Khan Rahi. Khan why don't you introduce yourself and say a little bit about what you do? Khan: I'm a community based researcher – I come from community organizing into doing research and I've done a fair amount of community development work across communities in Toronto and also of course across the country as well but primarily here in Toronto. I've worked for Social Planning Council for 10 years where I focused on new immigrants. Essentially the focus was increasing access for newcomer immigrants and refugees in Toronto in to Human Services.
Peter: Okay, now one of the things that I thought was really interesting is that you're concept around knowledge exchange, leadership, life-long learning among new Canadians and immigrant communities is different than a lot of the conversations so I wanted to have a conversation about…you know you described a program yesterday about teaching new immigrants about parenting, which is a form of knowledge exchange because of the context they're in. Can you talk a little bit about how you see knowledge exchange in the community context?
Khan: Well, essentially really the immigrant community could be categorized in terms of the use of information is basically oral community in other words, although the vast number of immigrants, of course they have highest literacy skill in their own language and also as all the standard data shows that significant number of immigrants that come to Canada are able to speak one or both of the official languages but still in terms of dealing with services information and increase basically helping newcomers integrate into Canadian society and different facets is still…oral communication remains to be a really key thing and also I think in this population, I have learned over a number of years that I have worked, that it's not sufficient to use only one mode of communication you have to use multiple modes of communication to reach different people specifically that the population is divided into two categories into sort of service users. One category – large category, they'll find their way through their community-based organization into the service, what's called mainstream services and they'll find their way into services and access ESL and job and employment opportunities and so on, but there's another sector of the population – they remain really out of reach…is hard to reach even for community-based organizations within these communities – it's really hard to reach them because they respond to accessing services through word of mouth, informal groups and a lot of times, just acquaintances, community members and neighbors, family members and so on. And it's a significant percentage of the people that actually get left out of the services. So it's essential to use the multiple medium to basically access and reach a whole lot of people in order to connect into services. Essentially the equation is this, that if people access services that are available, they also show a period of integration during that… Peter: Okay. So leadership with a process…I mean this is really an interesting example of life-long learning. This podcast series is done for the Canadian Council on Learning which is creating a context and a culture in Canada supporting ongoing learning so how does that look like in the communities that you're dealing with? Some of the people I've talked to, talk about the academic process or some of them talk about the business process, or some talk about re-training. What does life-long learning look like in the communities that you're working with? Khan: I think what has happened and is basically is common knowledge in some way that there is a tendency in immigrant population to retain the leadership - once the leadership emerges, to retain the leadership. And the leadership is basically…it's a guiding force if you like and it's not only a single individual usually – a lot of times there's a group of people – there's a sector of people within each community that actually guides people. The leadership plays an important role in many respects, one of which is to hold the community together…or…as a community, whether identity, whether vision, whether dreams – and the other part of that, which is really significant and is the whole question of providing opportunity for mentorship…so by highlighting positive achievements in the community or in terms of children for example – the younger generation – it's important to see the younger people with a higher achievement that basically that showpiece if you like….sort of…would be a good defined positive example for others to move on, is essential. Peter: So how does knowledge from…you have a cross-appointment at CAMH at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health – how does evidence and research knowledge intersect with the knowledge and experience of the people in the community? How does that exchange happen and how do you move from that interface between research and practice and experience and move it into programs and policy?
Khan: Well I think it is basically, to put it simply, is almost like it's a translation service in a sense that you have to dissect the academic language and concepts and literature in the way problems are articulated so that that articulation takes a different mode and a different step basically which means that you have to translate that into what it actually means in terms of concrete terms. Peter: Okay, can you give an example? Khan: For example, the mental health stigma and the impact of that – so we all know that mental health – there's a whole bunch of literature - all kinds of stuff has been done and in one of the areas…in one of the projects that I actually worked on is to translate a mental health stigma into say…what…how communities interpret it. So what's happening is that each community has a different attitude toward mental health. The community that I brought together which is basically, essentially service providers and so on, they…two anecdotes they describe is to how much community members, family members and so on shun actually or hide mental health problems – they actually effectively hide them. And it was really interesting to see that…how that…the impact – the negative impact of the stigma that is demonstrated…that was demonstrated in literature that could help these communities to understand that your not actually hiding…or you're hiding actually temporarily - they can see it because they don't want people to talk about it and so on but you're actually you're hurting the chances of people to survive - their health, their prospects, to get proper treatment and so on. So that's what I mean by translation? You have to bring the knowledge…the evidence-based knowledge closer to the reality of people who live because they already have done these things so they do it with the best intention, saying that's probably the way they protect their loved ones and so on, but on the other hand they're basically hurting their healthy chances. So the translation of course will have to take a different…apply a different approach in each community because some communities are very well versed – they know where to go, they know what to do and so on – especially if they have a higher percentage of the younger generation or are educated and so on but there are a whole lot of other communities that do not have that. It's specifically the refugee community is really, really hurting because a lot of these refugee communities, especially in Toronto, are very small, fragile – they don't have strong infrastructure to build organizations so it's important to reach them and point out that it not some academic exercise but basically what happened was evidence-based knowledge about, let's say in this case the metal health stigma..you're talking about a healthy population. Peter: So actually, let's talk about that in terms of infrastructure. One of the things that we've talked about in terms of creating a supportive life-long learning community – of engaging in ongoing knowledge exchange is a set of appropriate incentives and infrastructure that supports this. So let's use the example of a refugee community here in Toronto – what are the incentives, what are the infrastructure to help support that movement? What works in that community?
Khan: Well in the case of…and this is generalizing because every refugee community comes from entirely different…but by and large I think it's safe to say that now Canada is getting a different category of refugees. Refugees no longer come from one source – they're usually actually multiple source by the time they reach Canada so which means these people have gone through so much before...prior to arriving in Canada and they've seen a lot of stuff, they have a lot of devastation and so on, so bottom line, a supported system is really essential to have a supportive environment for refugees to feel comfortable enough, so they can start addressing or expressing some stuff. But basically the thing to do is to use the existing services that are there – of course individual highlighted incentives will work but also because…for example, English as a second language services, by and large could be a really good channel through which to communicate a whole lot of information… Peter: Okay. Khan: …and getting across basically because a lot of these people – where they come from – they're eager to learn the language so that they can get jobs. That's one layer, the other layer is actually workplaces because also the vast majority of these people that have come as refugees especially, they're so anxious – some of them have not been in a workplace for 10 years, 15 years and then they're anxious to get jobs so ones that are workplace, that's another place to actually plug in and find out industries that are really attract a lot of refuges. For example, garment industry attracts a lot of people that's some of the other industries that they attract people. Those are the places that actually reach people about all sorts of stuff especially you know as I said …if the evidence-based information is translated to a common language to a user friendly language is basically… Peter: So in talking about evidence, when you hear the word evidence, is there a particular way that you look at evidence? Khan: Basically it means that there is sufficient grounds to demonstrate that a particular problem does actually exist. There's not hearsay, is not anecdotal…has reached a point where it's got a universal attention if you like, because of the fact that it's…well…for like…for example we all know it took a while for everybody to realize that smoking was a harmful thing. Peter: Right.
Khan: And until the evidence - the evidence was there – people were dying from lung cancer and so on, but actually became even more powerful when tobacco companies started…evidence from local companies came forward saying that...showing that chemicals and so on…the addiction process and so on - but it is the same with everything else with gambling…with you name it.
Peter: So it's really that kind of scale. So how do you, within the communities that you work in, how do you build the evidence to support new programs or new policies or new sets of practices within those communities – how do you build that evidence?
Khan: Well that's really hard to answer because the thing is that every community is different and also there's a lot of different problems. Some problems are easier than in others but essentially it sounds simplistic but basically people in the communities that I work, their need is profound and once they have a profound need for something…let's say that I have a community that has a profound need to get into durable, good jobs – solid jobs – safe jobs, and because their community members are hurting, they've been in unsafe jobs or they have…are economically or totally impoverished or they know its visible and so there's the need now – this community doesn't need…it's not a rocket science to discover that this community really needs some help – some way to find their way. And once they find a few people who have achieved, that's evidence-based enough for them to see what it means to them to be in safe jobs, what it means to be in a safe environment, what it means to have your children succeed in a school (system). Peter: So when do you know you're getting the value from the knowledge that you have and how it's applied? What are success indicators from the application of knowledge?
Khan: I think the best and most effective thing is that when somebody from these communities get up there – stand up there and say this is what happened to me. And I'll give an example of what's involved in the program, which was basically an upgrading in program to bring members of immigrants and refugees that worked in the human services sector – is front line and so on – providing an opportunity to go to post-secondary education and so on – it was revealing to see some people who were working, let's say in front line, dead-end jobs for all we could gather to see that once they learn through the upgrading program and so on, to come to a point where they got promotions, they got moved somewhere else or they started thinking about improving their education and they will get up in front of 50-60 people and say this is what this program or this opportunity did to me and this is what happened to me- this is where I was before and this is why I am here and this is where I'm going next. And I think those individual…essentially we're talking about changing individual behavior and if that gets an articulation that basically somebody comes and says this is what it did to me.. Peter: So the individual is speaking up is representative of something else moving in? Khan: I think it's extremely powerful…extremely powerful. Peter: Okay.
Khan: Of course we cannot generalize just because something happened – positive happened to one person is going to happen to everybody.
Peter: But it's an indicator? Khan: Exactly.
Peter: What are the shifts or how are you helping to increase the value of the knowledge that comes out of your work now? Are there sets of relationships that are emerging? Is there a change in the policy community? What's happening that moves the knowledge that comes from people working within their community? How is that moving into policies – into practices? How are you getting full value?
Khan: Toronto is an exceptional place. The reality here is that there are a lot of different people here but in terms of more narrowing…that the response to the question is that what happens is generally speaking there are probably three layers that this information could go into translated into some policy that will become basically more institutionalized. One of which is that we have, within the immigrant community now, we have effectively good channel of advocacy here and people, organizations and so on, band together and advocate on a specific thing. Let's say for example, right now the current issue of poverty among immigrants is a powerful thing and in fact in the recent - yesterday's announcement the Ontario Government has moved in to having a cabinet…a powerful cabinet committee to deal with poverty – that's an essential thing to see that years of advocacy has lead to something like that and I'm sure there will be all sorts of policy coming out of that – just announcement today. That's one channel. The other channel is that basically service providers – to bundle up a whole bunch of service providers in addressing them as collectively responsible to say, “Look, you guys have all the services, all the tax payers money, track record, history and so on and how you also accumulate a whole lot of knowledge – what do you do with that?
Peter: Okay Khan: So that you can move that and the other part which is actually a really small but very significant trend in Toronto is that more and more members are from recent communities, immigrant communities find themselves in the political channels. I mean there are more people are getting elected – the last election we've got the first Iranian getting elected in a place that I work in the York region that has been absolutely no action conveyed on to community organizations. But there were tons of Iranians living there with struggling, is a problem and so on. And in Mississauga for example, we had people from the Arab community, from smaller South Asian communities and so on. So I think that's the other channel that's happening that probably set an example nationally to see that that's another effective way that people can go… Peter: Okay. Khan:… to encourage their members to go into politics in their local level of government, provincial level, federal level, what have you and that's an effective way to do it. Peter: So what are some of the greatest challenges that you face in the work that you are doing?
Khan: Well I think it's just…I mean one of the fundamental challenges basically that you're out there against fundamentally systemic issues. A lot of the systemic issues are so powerful, so overwhelming, that you need a lot of different, effective tools to break that break though and has been…some of the examples that I gave you – it took years before… Peter: Right. Khan: Before we basically…we achieved something but essentially I think the challenges is that standard systemic problems are powerful, therefore you really need to affect more resources. I'm not suggesting more money – I don't think more money putting into the system in a problem isn't really a necessary solution. It helps of course, but you need is basically people who…resources that will be affective use and also good solid understanding of what is systemic issues are so that we can pour...we can take a crack at it.
Peter: Well let's look at the other side of that. What are the greatest rewards from doing this kind of work?
Khan: Well, I think that the fact that you make a difference in people's lives, and of course it's always gratifying more in the individual level and also at a community level when you see the work that you've been doing or other people are doing along with you and so on that actually are indirectly has translated into making a difference in people's lives and that could be a small thing, could be a big thing – I think it's always gratifying to see that while you made the difference… Peter: Okay. If you…I'm going to ask that impossible question that everybody asks. If you had a crystal ball and it told the future reasonably well, if you could look forward ten years, how do you see the processes of knowledge exchange to be, especially with regards to life-long learning and the capacity to make well informed decisions, in community development?
Khan: I think that if society…societal…society as a whole will increase the transparency of…the more we do away with hidden stuff and become more blunt – just the same way that's on now - the language of environment is getting the global warming…becoming very, very blunt. Everybody all across the system knows that basically something is happening - same thing that happened actually with some of the specific problems – like I mentioned smoking and so on. And I think if that's…the more blockages, the more obstacles we will move, and I think that's the better …better society will look at it. There's nothing wrong with being blunt about problems, but we can't do that unless we really get rid of… Peter: So transparency… Khan: Yes Peter: Openness, sharing of knowledge. Khan: Yes, yes Peter: Okay Khan: And that way of course, people share ideas, they also, along with that comes basic things – they basically share solutions, they share remedies, they share agonies too – that there will be a shared way of saying, “Right now we're all dealing with all sorts of problems – health problems”. That people are really…like you can see…find it for example in breast cancer sector or in lung cancer and in other areas, you find people…a cluster of people that are actually…or HIV positive people. So I mean those kinds of things and ones become…basically we're dealing with more and more of societal issues and no longer isolated issues – it's not just happening to me and nobody else, so I think transparency is the way to go is the way I see it. Peter: Great. Kahn, it's always been a pleasure. Khan: Likewise.
Peter: Thanks very much for your time.
