Creating Accessible Neighbourhoods wants to hear from you!

Creating Accessible Neighbourhoods (CAN) is working with Realize on a project that needs your help. They are looking for participants to help them expand their collective knowledge and understanding about the issues that directly impact the employment journey of queer and trans community members living with episodic disabilities in Canadian workplaces. Participants will be paid $75 for their contribution. 

Participants must be 2SLGBTQIA+ and disabled/person with a disability, chronically ill, mad, crip, neurodivergent, and/or Deaf/deaf with episodic disabilities. Participants must be living in what is colonially known as Canada (no citizen requirements). CAN is particularly seeking interviewees who live outside of Vancouver. The interviews will be online 1-on-1. 

To participate, contact Heather McCain, Executive Director of CAN by email at info@canbc.org or phone/text 604.437.7331.  They will send you a calendly link for you to book a 30 or 60 minute interview. They understand if the interview needs to be cut short due to pain/energy. Typed follow-up answers will be accepted if you didn’t get a chance to say everything. 

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Realize’s definition of episodic disabilities:

A person can simultaneously live with both permanent and episodic disabilities; however, there are clear distinctions. An episodic disability is marked by fluctuating periods and degrees of wellness and disability. In addition, these periods of wellness and disability are unpredictable. As a consequence, a person may move in and out of the labour force in an unpredictable manner.

Examples of episodic disabilities: arthritis, asthma, cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, colitis, crohn’s disease, diabetes, epilepsy, fibromyalgia, HIV/AIDS, pain, lupus, mental health issues, multiple sclerosis (MS), muscular dystrophy, severe migraines, and more

More information: 

Under the Workplaces REVAMPED (Workplaces REcognizing the Value of eMPloyees with Episodic Disabilities) project, Realize aims to:

1) Increase awareness of episodic disabilities among employers;

2) Increase the understanding of employers of the challenges related to working and living with episodic disabilities;

3) Increase the capacity of employers to respond effectively to the challenges facing people living with episodic disabilities;

4) Increase access to information and networking opportunities for small, medium and large employers on leading practices in accommodating employees living with episodic disabilities in the workplace; and 

5) Increase the capacity of people living with episodic disabilities to communicate effectively about their lived experience.

Invitation to Participate: Poverty Reduction Focus Group

The Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction has partnered with an outside organization (Argyle) to facilitate a small online group discussion on how to make progress on poverty reduction in BC and update TogetherBC – BC’s Poverty Reduction Strategy.

DABC is bringing together our network to support and host this focus group discussion.

We have a goal of continuing to reduce poverty in our province and we want your advice on how to make sure future actions support those who need it most. Whether you have ideas about how to make more progress on poverty throughout BC, or suggestions about how legislation could be changed to better serve British Columbians, we want to hear from you.

Argyle is facilitating many meetings with the general public and smaller, more focused sessions with targeted populations that are disproportionately affected by poverty. This small group discussion will be led by Argyle and staff from DABC will be present.

This small group discussion will be completely confidential (see privacy statement below).

This session will take place online over Zoom on February 21, 2023 at 1pm for 1 hour.

DABC will be requiring participants’ names and email addresses in order to send the meeting link for the online focus group discussion. This information will not be shared with Argyle or the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction.

After attending the focus group discussion, each participant will receive a $100 honourarium. DABC will be handling the distribution of honoraria and participants can choose to pick up their honourarium in cash at DABC’s office in downtown Vancouver or have the amount mailed to them as a cheque.

If you are interested in participating in this focus group discussion, please send an email to feedback@disabilityalliancebc.org with the subject line: “Poverty Reduction Focus Group” as soon as possible. Please provide your name and how you would like to receive your honourarium.

A maximum of 12 participants will be selected to join this focus group discussion. We anticipate there may be a high volume of interested participants, and so only selected participants will be contacted for further details.

In your email, please identify any accommodation requests you may have for the online focus group discussion.

Privacy Statement

Focus group participants must understand and agree to the following privacy statement:

  *   Participating in a small group meeting means your responses will be collected for the purposes of informing TogetherBC, B.C.’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. Please note that questions in this small group are optional and your responses are confidential. Information gathered will be anonymous and analyzed as a group. Please do not include any personally identifiable information about yourself or others in your responses.

  *   If you have any questions about the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information, please contact: Director, Partnerships and Engagement: citizenengagement@gov.bc.ca.

  *   This information is being collected by the Ministry Social Development and Poverty Reduction under the authority of section 26(c) and 26(e) of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (“FOIPPA”).

Long COVID Patient Experience Project

The Long COVID Patient Experience Project was developed to connect people living with long COVID and health scientists so that they can learn together about the impact of long COVID and use this information to guide research to solve the puzzle of long COVID.

Have or had Long COVID? Want to share your story? Take the survey here: https://patientscientist.ca/long-covid-survey

The website is a partnership between the BC SUPPORT Unit, the Post-COVID Interdisciplinary Clinical Care Network, Arthritis Research Canada, University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and Population Data BC.