Culturally-Grounded Applied Research with Filipino Groups and Organizations In Canada: Moving Towards Collective Impact and Community Change

Background and purpose: The Filipino Canadian Social and Community Workers Network (FCSCWN) brings together a roundtable of researchers to discuss how our recent projects with Filipino community groups and organizations in different parts of the country aim for collective and community change throughout and beyond the research process. We draw attention to how we utilize Filipino ways of knowing, being, and doing in projects that draw from different social justice-oriented theoretical and methodological approaches. This panel invites researchers to join our conversation on how we individually and collectively engage with culturally grounded research and mobilize findings towards tangible organizational and community change.

Presenter 1 will present findings from a community-based participatory feasibility study conducted with and for the Canadian Filipino Association of the Yukon (CFAY). A team of nine community and university researchers came together to examine community perspectives (dreams, aspirations, and pragmatics) on what a Filipino Community Hub might look like and function in the Northern context of Whitehorse, Yukon. The feasibility study put forward important capacity building directions for the organization specifically around organizational development and pilot programming, which is now funded by a federal agency, Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

Presenter 2 will explore how evaluation moves from being a tool of control in the settlement sector to a tool of collective voice. She will present learnings from her work to co-develop an organizational theory of change and evaluation strategy with staff at the Kababayan Multicultural Centre, a Filipino-led non-profit charitable organization in Toronto. This work highlights how critical evaluation can function as a protective and generative tool, enabling organizations to resist pressures for metric-driven, dehumanized practices while strengthening and sustaining a Filipino-centred approach to settlement work. Lessons from this project point to the role of applied research (like evaluation) in democratizing decision-making in the sector by centering community knowledge both in organizational reporting and broader accountability processes.

Presenter 3 will offer her methodological contributions drawn from her community and scholarly work with trans and queer Filipinos in Toronto and in the Canadian prairies of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. She will map the generative and expansive effects when one considers “trans Filipino diasporic subjectivity” as entry points in one's analytic, empirical, and community work. Considering how the trans community in our contemporary times have been the target of anti-trans policies, Pino will also share the power of community education through the arts to serve as a path for a transformative community practice and decolonization of gender, race, and sexualities.

Presenter 4 will highlight her ongoing research collaborating with Centre Kapwa in Montreal, Quebec, a by-and-for Filipino youth mental health non-profit. Stol will share findings from her dissertation and post-doctorate research addressing the invisibilities and inequities faced by Filipinos across generations. In assessing the impact of group and arts-based Photovoice and Filipino Kuwentuhan (talk-story) used during her dissertation, she shows how these research processes may support empowerment, intergenerational healing and community care, which she has mobilized in her current project designs with Centre Kapwa.