Workshops 2025
Concurrent workshops will be running in the morning and in the afternoon. Participants will have the opportunity to attend one workshop in each block.
No need to sign up! Workshops are first come, first served.
Volunteers will help you find the workshop locations at St. John’s High School.
Check back in October for the Speakers page for Bios!
Workshop ONE
10:45 am – 12:00 pm
Have you ever tried to get word out to try to nudge the actions of a workplace, school, or community? Have you poured resources and energy into posters, flyers, ads, and more – only to see minimal change or not know if it worked?
Community Based Social Marketing (CBSM) is an approach designed by a Canadian scientist based on a blend of social marketing and environmental psychology research, around how people actually make decisions and implement behaviours.
This session will offer a condensed introductory overview of what CBSM is, and will break down the steps into manageable pieces so you can take it into your own advocacy context. This approach is most often used in environmental sustainability and healthcare contexts but can be applied to any area where individual behaviour change is being targeted.
Speakers: Teresa Prokopanko
Level: Introductory
How is climate change impacting our community? What is needed to build a future that ensures the well-being of our community?
Climate change is experienced at the local level however we are not all impacted equally. Community-based organizations (CBOs) within provide critical services and support to our community. These services and the communities they support already are, and will continue to be, disproportionately impacted by climate change.
The Prairie Climate Centre, an internal research centre at the University of Winnipeg, is undertaking a project that aims to build awareness and a more complete understanding of the impact of climate change on the day-to-day operations of CBOs. This understanding is essential to planning for the robust delivery of these critical community services as our city continues to see the impacts of climate change.
This interactive workshop will aim to foster dialogue and knowledge sharing to better understand how CBOs are experiencing climate change, their needs to adequately respond to it, and important questions, challenges, and considerations in planning for the future.
Speaker: Christey Allen
Organization: Prairie Climate Centre, University of Winnipeg
Level: All Levels
If you could draw on your most hopeful and optimistic vein to imagine a future 10 or 20 years from now, what would that future look like? Who would be there? What would we be doing? Now think about the present. What values, attitudes, human and other resources do we need to take us there? How would we know that we’re on track if we were to check in at year 3, year 5, year 8 and so on? Can you envision a future where diversity and belonging thrive? What about environmental sustainability, housing, or employment equity?
The StoryBridge Network invites you to join us for a 60-minute workshop-style conversation about visioning a future for four social justice topics: diversity and belonging, the environment, housing, and employment. This session blends Theory of Change with lived experience and future vision storytelling to demonstrate the power of human and community-centered policy and strategic planning that is attuned to marginalized voices.
Join us for this skill-building conversation about co-creating a roadmap for action on four key issues affecting newcomers, seniors, youth, and displaced individuals in our communities.
Speakers: Patlee Creary
Organization: The StoryBridge Network
Level: All Levels
Newcomers are an essential part of Manitoba’s present and future: bringing diverse skills, experiences, and perspectives that enrich our communities and strengthen our economy. This panel will explore how empowering newcomers through meaningful employment and financial stability can create lasting, transformative change for all Manitobans.
We will discuss the unique settlement and employment challenges faced by a wide range of newcomers, including asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants, and highlight practical strategies to overcome these barriers. From supporting newcomers in navigating immigration systems to providing skills training, mentorship, and access to meaningful work, our focus will be on building pathways that foster both individual success and community prosperity.
Youth leadership development is a catalyst for building a more equitable and prosperous Manitoba. Our panelist will also discuss how by equipping young people with the skills, confidence, and vision to lead, we are empowering them to imagine innovative solutions for our shared future and take meaningful action in our communities.
Speakers: Afsheen Siddiqui, Omar Fahmawi, Khalid Jaleel, Afsana Kishwar, and Amna Iqbal
Organization: Healthy Muslim Families
Level: All levels
Community organizations often run impactful programs — but how can you tell if your work is meeting its goals, and how can you use that insight to create broader change?
This interactive workshop will begin with a presentation on practical approaches to program evaluation, followed by examples of how results can be used to influence decision-makers, inform policy change, and strengthen funding applications. Facilitators will share simple, adaptable methods for measuring outcomes without complex or costly systems.
Through a hands-on, paper-based activity, participants will review sample survey questions, explore what makes evaluation data useful, and discover effective ways to communicate findings.
Whether your goal is to improve services, advocate for systemic change, or both, you’ll leave with practical ideas you can apply immediately in your organization — equipping you to turn evidence into advocacy and create lasting impact in your community.
Speaker: Abigail Legaspi, Dr. Ardith McGeown-Plant, Royce Koop, and Rosty Othman
Organization: Centre for Social Science Research and Policy
Level: All Levels
Democracy is Not a Spectator Sport.
We know that our political system is not serving us and future generations but instead applies short term cycles that prevent sustainability, uses adversarial structures and procedures that prevent the collaboration we need and is leading to hyper-partisanship, incivility and polarization that entrenches the status quo or worse.
This workshop explores the more participatory democracy we need by applying our CD/CED values and using our creativity to innovate the political culture shift we need for the social, ecological and economic imperatives we face. Better community engagement, citizen assemblies, improved accountability and transparency, participatory multi-stakeholder decision making are some strategies social movements can create?
Our political systems were established before women and many others could vote, they were designed to protect the interests of property owners and that is exactly what they are still doing. Democracy is not a spectator sport. The Association of Former Manitoba MLAs is launching a Democracy Initiative that you can help with.
Speaker: Marianne Cerilli
Organization: Marianne Cerilli – Change Agent – Community Development for Health, Sustainability, Peace
Level: All Levels
Many organizations started their reconciliation efforts. However, some believe they are strong allies but are unintentionally mistaken due to blind spots within their organization. This often makes things worse.
This workshop will ensure that your organization is on the right path of true reconciliation and allyship by helping you discover blind spots and unintentional missteps.
Together we can learn and build a safer, more just society.
Speakers: Kyle J. Mason
Organization: kylejmason.ca
Level: Introductory
Manitoba Possible – a non-profit that delivers programs and services for people with disabilities and their families – has consistently seen the challenge of finding good, reliable in-home care over its 75 years of operations.
Care Possible was born from that unmet need with a mission to break down barriers for people in need of care and those who provide it. These barriers include access to choice in who you work with, financial barriers, equitable treatment, administrative complexities, and safety concerns.
This is the story of how an established non-profit organization took transformative action to address a complex, difficult problem and in the process committed the organization to a path of embracing innovative social enterprise, diversifying funding sources, and borrowing from the business playbook to deliver impact.
Speaker: Michael Coutts
Organization: Manitoba Possible
Level: Intermediate
In this session, Cate Friesen and co-facilitator Iris Yudai, will offer a snap-shot of People, Power, Change — a hands-on, leadership and organizing capacity-building training based on the Ganz model at Harvard that aims to sustain and grow the urgent work of collaborative social change advocacy and organizing for the immediate present and for the future.
This will be a hands-on workshop where you will get an opportunity to discover and tell your own ‘story of self’ and find out how you can use this story to build a movement.
Speaker: Cate Friesen
Organization: The Story Source
Level: Introductory
Stay tuned for more information!
Speaker: Brendan Reimer
Organization: Assiniboine Credit Union
Level: Introductory
Discover how communities across Canada are harnessing the power of social enterprise and social procurement to drive real change and generate lasting social impact.
Buy Social Canada is a social enterprise that provides social procurement consulting services, education, advocacy and Social Enterprise Certification. In this dynamic one-hour session, Niamh O’Sullivan, the Manager of Social Enterprise and Networks will share a big-picture view of the Canadian social enterprise ecosystem and growing social procurement.
Through inspiring stories, best practices, and practical tactics from across the country, you’ll discover how these tools are transforming local communities and creating meaningful impact.
Speaker: Niamh O’Sullivan
Organization: Buy Social Canada
Level: Introductory
This proposed session will describe what adult basic education is, how it is delivered in Manitoba, and how it has been funded in the past 25 years.
It will then describe a cost/benefit analysis of adult basic education done in the first 4 months of 2025, which shows that over time, adult basic education, because of its transformative character, pays for itself in reduced EIA costs, increased employment-related income tax revenue, and savings in health and criminal justice costs.
The conclusion is that the Province of Manitoba should be investing much more in adult basic education.
Speaker: Jim Silver
Organization: University of Winnipeg (Professor Emeritus)
Level: All Levels
Our approach to the presentation would help to answer the question, “Why a Black Heritage Experience Museum in Manitoba?” Our premise is that Manitoba lacks a dedicated, national, and culturally resonant space that centers the full spectrum of Black histories, stories, and futures—particularly one that is created by Black communities, for Black communities. This gap contributes to ongoing erasure, lack of cultural affirmation, and missed opportunities for national education, healing, and transformation.
Our vision for this museum space would be that it would help to authentically center Black history, joy, culture and resilience as well as serve as a place of healing through truth-telling, particularly confronting anti-Black racism in Canadian history. Our desire is to make history accessible to young people as the museum grows, adapts and reflects ongoing stories of Black people in Canada.
We would also share updates on our start up, pilot project, where we are now and next steps.
Speaker: Judy Williams, Patricia Eyamba, and Ralph Bryant
Organization: Black Canadian Experience Centre
Level: All Levels
Workshop TWO
1:30 – 2:45 pm
Explore how augmented-reality storytelling and community co-design can surface hidden cultural assets, drive community economic development, and catalyze transformative action – including a live demo of an AR app.
Community Economic Development (CED) depends on imagination: the ability to see possible futures and make those futures tangible. This session demonstrates a concrete path from imagination to action by combining community storytelling practices with a practical technology – an Augmented Reality (AR) app built in partnership with community knowledge-holders.
Participants will learn about the gamification of storytelling, possibly create short AR scenarios, see a live demo of the Focus Hub AR MVP, and pilot AR experiences in small groups. The emphasis is on culturally respectful storytelling, economic opportunity (local tourism, micro-enterprises, cultural products), and resourcing transformative change.
Participants will leave with frameworks to use cultural assets for economic reconciliation, a tested AR demo they can adapt, and a short action plan to pilot AR storytelling in their own context.
Speaker: Rubab Fatima
Organization: Focus Hub Inc.
Level: All levels
This workshop will bring together community members, educators, and youth in a collaborative space to imagine just, sustainable, and anti-racist futures through the lens of Community Economic Development (CED). Grounded in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, participants will reflect on how colonization, systemic racism, and extractive economies have shaped inequities in our communities—and will explore how we can heal, rebuild, and reimagine economic systems that honor land, culture, and community care.
Youth voices will be centered throughout, highlighting young people’s leadership in advancing community development, climate justice, and anti-racism education. Participants will critically examine how traditional CED models have excluded or displaced racialized communities, and will explore justice-oriented approaches that prioritize equity, land stewardship, cultural knowledge, and collective agency.
Through dialogue and collaborative mural-making, participants will co-create a visual expression of shared hopes, values, and strategies for community development rooted in Truth and Reconciliation, justice, and resilience.
Speaker: Monique Burke and Jordan Bighorn
Organization: Winnipeg School Division and CEDA
Level: All levels
The last year has seen a dramatic uptick in public opposition to equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives. While this is challenging, we can take hope in the fact that resistance to EDIA has been around for some time, and there are well-developed strategies for confronting these challenges. In this session, you will gain insights into common forms of resistance in workplace EDIA initiatives and trainings, and explore strategies for addressing resistance both before and after it happens.
Expect to be highly engaged through a combination of short lectures, multiple breakout discussions, and ample time for self-reflection. Participants will learn from the facilitator and each other, reflecting on and sharing their own wisdom as we collectively grapple with strategies to ensure that equitable and anti-oppressive community building continues to be valued by the communities it serves.
Moderator: Robin Attas
Organizations: Division of Extended Education, University of Manitoba
Level: All Levels
Prepare to lead better problem-solving meetings!
In this interactive session we will work through how to create a strategy by identifying a problem, setting a direction, and bringing people on board. We will work through a situation brought forward by a volunteer and we will walk through a set of steps craft a reasonable initial strategy, as well as methods for collecting and evaluating feedback so we can tell if our strategy is working or if we need to adjust.
The end goal of this session is to provide an example of setting the stage and bringing people together to be able to work together on complicated problems.
As the host I expect that all participants of this workshop will come ready to participate, either with a situation they’re working through and willing to share, or with an interest in actively helping to create a strategy alongside the other participants.
Speakers: Matthew Rempel
Organization: Strategy Made Simple
Level: Intermediate
Stay tuned for a description soon!
Speakers: TBC
Organization: Manitoba Cooperative Association, Community Futures Westman
Level: Introductory
“Healing Loudly Together” is the mission of the Love Notes Campaign. In order to help everyone heal loudly, we need to create a mental health system that accepts that “mental health is a universal right” by recognizing that the solutions for each community are unique and require an intersectional approach.
Ralph will facilitate an interactive conversation exploring why traditional mental health systems fail marginalized communities and how grassroots creative interventions fill critical gaps. Participants will examine successful models for building intersectional coalitions between artists, mental health advocates, and community organizations.
The session includes a hands-on “love-in” where participants create their own Love Notes using provided art materials and guided prompts. These community-created pieces will join Winnipeg’s World Mental Health Day “Love Bomb,” giving attendees direct participation in ongoing transformative action. Participants leave with practical tools for replicating this model in their own communities, proving that healing happens when we center lived experience, compensate community expertise, and democratize access to both art and mental wellness conversations.
Speaker: Ralph Bryant
Organization: The Love Notes Campaign
Level: Intermediate
Change is a constant reality for community organizations – whether it’s shifting funder priorities, increased community needs, or organizational transitions.
This interactive session will explore how we respond to change and how cultivating a culture of planning and evaluation can help organizations navigate it more effectively.
Participants will reflect on their own experiences, engage in small group discussions, and gain practical tools that support adaptability and learning.
Speaker: Cassandra Montanino
Organization: Leading4impact
Level: Intermediate
In this workshop, we will cover best practices in developing effective messaging in order to persuade people and win over public opinion and decisionmakers. As our world faces threats to human rights and democracy, activists and changemakers need to use effective messaging strategies to drive change — despite challenging circumstances — and that is what we will discuss in this workshop.
This session will cover actionable, easy-to-use frameworks that help organizations and activists communicate more persuasively. If you are trying to win over more people to your cause, then this workshop can’t be missed! Drawing from the intersection of communications and psychology, Kathryn will pull on both “tried and true” experience and evidence-based best practices grounded in research.
We will ask and answer questions like:
Why is hope persuasive? How can we mobilize, and ultimately grow, our base? And how can we win over public opinion on ‘controversial’ issues in social, economic, or climate contexts?
Kathryn will draw examples from her work supporting local and national organizations with messaging, including major national campaigns shaping public opinion to support trans communities and refugee and newcomer communities.
Speakers: Kathryn LeBlanc
Organization: Leblanc & co. Communications
Level: All levels
Winnipeg, like many cities across Canada, faces a deepening housing crisis with rising rents, growing homelessness and a shortage of affordable housing, making it urgent for communities to come together to imagine new solutions. One opportunity lies in land and buildings already owned by community organizations that could play a role in addressing these challenges.
Shared Ground is a Winnipeg-based initiative funded in part by the Government of Canada that helps social purpose organizations reimagine their spaces as affordable housing opportunities. By providing early-stage support at no cost – including project visioning, feasibility support and partnership development – Shared Ground equips non-profits with the confidence and momentum to respond to urgent housing needs.
This workshop will share case studies and invite participants to consider how similar approaches could apply in their communities. Through peer learning and discussion, participants will identify supports to unlock community-owned assets and highlight collaboration as a pathway to transformative change.
Speakers: Shannon Wiebe
Organization: 5468796 Architecture / Shared Ground
Level: Intermediate
Stay tuned for a description soon!
Speakers: TBC
Organizations: SEED Winnipeg, The Jubilee Fund
Level: All levels
In this session the facilitator will introduce participants to a first -person digital storytelling process guided by participatory education principles. Participants will be introduced to the ways in which this resource is used internationally to support individual and collective healing and wellness, to strengthen organizational and community capacity for inclusivity and diversity, and to explore solutions to critical social, economic, political and environmental challenges.
The focus of the session will be on the power of personal storytelling to soften the divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’ – to create safe empathic spaces that form the necessary scaffolds for collaborative change efforts across a wide range of societal challenges.
A number of digital stories created by community members from Winnipeg’s diverse cultural and faith communities on the theme of culture and identity will be screened, followed by group reflections and by invitations to participants to share their own stories.
Facilitator: Francis Ravinsky, Hilda Mann, and Amna Burki
Organization: Community Works Manitoba
Level: All Levels
Workshop THREE
3:00 – 4:15 pm
Advocacy can help with many different situations I will describe how advocacy helps with complex systems and other systems like the educational systems and how to organize in a way that makes you successful. Advocacy isn’t always about fighting for families sometimes its fighting for yourself to help you get what you need, weather its EIA, School, Child welfare or just lodging a complaint. Advocacy skills are transferable; you can use the skills you get from learning how to advocate in many different ways. I will explain how to use advocacy skills in a diverse way and show you how to get what you need from advocating for yourself or your friends and family.
Speaker: Mary Burton
Organization: Zoongizi Ode (formerly Fearless R2W)
Level: All levels
Join us for the first circle of what we hope to be an ongoing meeting – the Anti-Oppressive Practice (AOP) Community of Practice. Lots of non-profits are leading the way in AOP initiatives through programming, policies, practices, commitments, and actions. The AOP Community of Practice is where we can come together, share ideas, have hard discussions, and support each other in taking action and making change through an anti-oppressive lens in the non-profit sector. Join the conversation!
Speakers: Kelsey Guyot
Organization: Heartwood Healing Centre
Level: Introductory
Stay tuned for a description soon!
Speaker: TBC
Organization: Clan Mothers Healing Village
Level: All Levels
Stay tuned for a description soon!
Speaker: TBC
Organization: West Broadway Community Organization
Level: All Levels
At Artbeat Studio, we’ve seen creativity transform lives, not just in healing minds, but in building stronger, more connected communities. In this interactive session, we’ll explore how art acts as a powerful tool for recovery and a driver of social and economic change. We’ll highlight how creative spaces foster belonging, mental well-being, and resilience.
Participants will learn how investing in the arts creates ripple effects: reducing isolation, strengthening neighbourhoods, and generating new economic opportunities. Then, we’ll put imagination into action: together, we’ll co-create a quick collaborative art piece that symbolizes “imagining our future,” leaving you with a tangible reminder of what’s possible when creativity leads the way. Whether you’re a community builder, policymaker, or artist, you’ll leave with fresh ideas and practical inspiration for integrating art into transformative community action.
Speaker: Uyen Pham
Organization: Artbeat Studio
Level: All levels
With the launch of the Federal Government’s Social Finance Fund in 2023, Canada is undergoing a national market-building initiative to grow the use of social finance, which is the umbrella term for the alignment profit, planet, and purpose and builds on the past work of community economic development, impact investing, and philanthropy.
Told through stories and examples, this session seeks to contextualize and demystify social finance, moving from jargon to communal understanding of what it is, what it is not, and how social finance can serve as a catalyst for transformative action in community economic development. Ultimately, participants will walk away with the ideas of how the repayable, nonrepayable, and blended forms of social finance can support their work.
Speakers: Tristan Smyth, Naomi Gichungu, and Matthew Rempel
Organization: Propel Impact, Northpine Foundation, and Strategy Made Simple
Level: Introductory
This is a learn-by-doing activity where you will learn about Future Creating Workshops while participating in one.
In this two-part arts-infused workshop we will explore what utopian community futures look like and how we can bring them forward.
The workshop is set up in three phases
1. Critique, where we critically analyze the issue
2. Utopia, where we let our imagination run free to depict our ideal; and
3. Realization, where we look critically at our ideal and see how we can make it a reality.
Speakers: Alejandra Diabb-Sanchez
Website: utopiaslab.space
Level: All levels
This session will explore care-sharing as a practical and transformative way to resource compassionate action. Just as ridesharing connects riders with drivers, care-sharing connects people who need help with those who want to help. Every day, neighbours step in to support families in their community, helping to strengthen them before or in the midst of crises. Through the CarePortal platform, community members can respond directly to real-time needs identified by child-serving professionals, creating trust-building networks of care that multiply impact across neighborhoods.
Participants will discover how small acts of kindness — a bed for a child, an infant car seat for an expectant mom, or transportation to an appointment — add up to systemic change when mobilized at scale. Together, we’ll imagine a future where compassion is resourced, shared, and multiplied, and where every person, regardless of background or profession, can play a part in building stronger, more resilient communities.
Speaker: Shannon Steeves
Organization: CareImpact
Level: All Levels
In this session participants will have an opportunity to help develop the next public policy advocacy campaign that The Right to Housing Coalition will implement in the lead up to Manitoba’s Spring provincial budget. Participants will learn about the organizing and advocacy model used by the coalition in Manitoba to call on governments at all levels to expand the supply of social housing.
The Coalition will share concrete strategies and tactics it has used in past campaigns as well as some of the public policy outcomes that have been achieved.
Speaker: Kirsten Bernas
Organization: Right to Housing Coalition
Level: All Levels
In this session I will lead participants through a series of activities to build solidarity, class consciousness, and individual confidence in workplaces, classrooms, and communities. We will work as a group to write a mini-manifesto, alongside individual writing to amplify our unique strengths, and leave with a keepsake to remind us of our goals as workers and community members. As I usually work with incarcerated people in prisons and jails where no computers or devices are permitted, this will be an entirely analog workshop, featuring icebreakers, conversation, handwriting, a crumpled paper throwing contest, and an old-school laminator.
Speakers: John Samson Fellows
Organization: John Howard Society of Manitoba
Level: Introductory
Community builders need practical ways to reframe complex challenges, generate fresh ideas, and mobilize cross-sector collaboration. This highly interactive workshop guides participants through the intentional use of metaphors and images as tools to ignite fresh ideas, foster deeper connections, and facilitate shared understanding.
Participants will learn how metaphors and images can shift our thinking in order to help teams surface assumptions, connect across differences, and imagine future-ready solutions. Participants will leave with actionable tools and insights that can be used for a variety of purposes including team building, organizational alignment, strategy sessions, stakeholder engagement, and collaborative problem-solving.
Speaker: Carissa Caruk-Ganczar
Organization: Flourish Leadership Development
Level: All Levels
What does it look like to create an accessible and inclusive community space or workplace? How can we create these spaces in times of economic uncertainty?
The purpose of this workshop is to start to address those questions. We are offering some tools to help your team start thinking about how you might create more accessibility and inclusivity, using our extensive knowledge on creating accessibility within a tight budget.
Also, there were so many good questions about service animals at the last Gathering, that we built a project around it. We will be sharing our series of short videos from people who use service animals, explaining their lived experience.
We look forward to sharing in conversations on how small but transformative actions can help us to imagine accessible and inclusive futures.
If you stick around to the end, you might just get a prize for playing Accessibility and Inclusion Bingo.
Speakers: Allen Mankewich and Sheryl Peters
Organizations: Manitoba League of Persons with Disabilities (MLPD)
Level: Intermediate