In spring of 2021, Anishinaabe Elders T8aminik Rankin and Marie Josée Tardif, shared a powerful teaching with MakeWay staff and board known as the Seventh Fire Prophecy. Known for hundreds of years, this story tells of a time when western civilization has put all living things, even humans, on the brink of extinction. We were told of a moment of reckoning and of a fork in the road where we could collectively choose between two paths: one that continues its destructive trajectory, and another of interconnectedness.
As the Elders ended our profound discussion, they asked us: what will your role be to help “deliver our society from the road to destruction”?
MakeWay’s answer to this was informed by the guidance of community partners, our two decades of work, of learning and unlearning. As we thought on how to respond to the urgency of our current moment, we knew a community-led approach has never been more needed. At the time, we were (and still very much are) amid multiple crises that could quickly be summed up as deepening inequality, climate catastrophe and rapid biodiversity loss, while facing an uncertain recovery from the global pandemic.
The country, its people, and institutions, were dealing with a profound process of reckoning, where Indigenous peoples are demanding truth, reconciliation, and sovereignty. Similarly, the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, as well as the deaths of Regis Korchinski-Paquet in Toronto, and Chantel Moore in New Brunswick, ignited national protests on the streets and conversations across organizations about anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism. The COVID-19 crisis disproportionately impacted people along lines of race, age, and gender, domestic violence skyrocketed under lockdowns. Female-dominated roles – like teachers, health care workers, and parenting – took on unbearable burdens. Canadians also witnessed some of the most immediate and dangerous climate impacts to date – with record-breaking temperatures killing over 500 people in BC and a local village so hot it went up in flames attracting global attention.
This description belies both the immense human suffering on one hand and the groundswell of communities coming together for justice and nature on the other. And so out of these questions, reflections, and experiences came the launch of our ambitious new 3-year Strategic Plan.
We wanted this new plan to reflect our desire to have clarity of purpose, create more transparency and thoughtfully address questions and tensions about or identity and mission. We saw our unique role centered around three major strengths:
- Deep relationships and knowledge of place, in remote, Northern and Indigenous communities, and in neighbourhoods in major city centres
- Our ability to deploy a unique toolkit including grantmaking; funder collaboratives; donor and community advised funds; impact investing; advisory services; and the shared platform – the first and only national platform for 75 community-led innovations and growing
- A fundamental commitment to holistic systems-change based on the interdependence of social justice, economic wellbeing, and ecological balance
After months of gathering, listening, reading and learning, the drafting team put pen to paper! The road to defining our 7 priorities and commitments to advancing them was far from straightforward, but it was an incredibly illuminating and enriching experience. After a year of consultation with staff, partners, and community leaders, deep reflection on our key principles and direction, and collaborative team writing: this work is finally complete. The next ten years will be both volatile and critical for humans and nature, so MakeWay will remain highly adaptive and relational as well as ambitious and bold as we move forward with this strategy.
As our President & CEO, Joanna Kerr, has said, we could have drafted the document over a week or two, with only a few people involved. But by engaging and listening to many voices within and outside our organization, we created a document that we are confident MakeWay staff and partners can feel proud of. It is true to who MakeWay has become and is becoming in the world.
