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Our partners, collectives and projects

Artistic and Solidarity Action with Honduran Migrants/Refugees (Partnership with Sick Muse Arts, No One is Illegal and Honduro-Canada Solidarity Community)

This collaborative and artistic event in solidarity with the migrant caravan included a panel discussion, art activities for children and various artistic performances from the community. The funds collected in this event were sent to Las Patronas in Mexico. 

Cocimientos (Partnership with University of Toronto Researcher, Isa Urrutia): Cocimientos is a community-based eating-disorder support and knowledge project, made up of group of women, trans, gender non-conforming, and non-binary people of Abya Yala* also known as Latin America and the Caribbean. Our goal is to create programming and resources on rediscovering positive relationships with our bodies, in community. We are a Toronto-based community-based support and knowledge building group of people of Abya Yala* also known as Latin America and the Caribe. The group is named ‘cocimientos’ – a cocimiento is a medicinal herb drink used to cure maladies. “Cocimiento” is also close to the word “conocimiento” (knowledge) because through this group we hope to learn more about ourselves and our experiences. The project works to create community resources on topics relating to food and bodies in Toronto through a body-positive and fat-positive lens.

Tales from the South (Partnership with Working Women Community Centre) Our collaborative project between PODER and Working Women Community Centre ran through the summer of 2018. A small group of participants with roots in Abya Yala came together to collectively explore identity and belonging within the multicultural context of Canada. The project allowed participants to engage in weekly learning sessions, create community and reclaim pre-colonial knowledges that have been lost through the ongoing process of colonialism. The project included six learning sessions facilitated by Mayan educator Maria Montejo and two art sessions lead by community artist Janet Romero-Leiva. The program culminated in a collective gathering an art display at Dufferin Park, in the city of Tkaronto. Tales from the South seeks to build relationships of solidarity among the Latinx community and Indigenous communities in Turtle Island. We hope this to be the beginning of a collective awareness in our community that fosters much needed relationships of solidarity. 

PODER is honoured to cultivate these spaces in the meeting place of Toronto (from the Mohawk word “Tkaronto,” meaning “the place in the water where the trees are standing”). It is the traditional territory of many First Peoples, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples.

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The territory is subject to the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. Today, Tkaronto is still the home to many Indigenous people across Turtle Island. We are grateful to have the opportunity to build community in solidarity with Indigenous nations on this territory.

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We remember those who came here involuntarily, particularly those brought to these lands due to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery. This city was built on stolen land and stolen labour of Black, Indigenous, and racialized people.

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