Diversity : Featured Stories

For a Chinese-born economist, the difficulties new immigrants have entering the labour market are more than just theoretical. Maggie Chen's learned the obstacles firsthand. She's also learned about the resources available to help her.

With Muskrat Magazine, Rebeka Tabobondung and David Shilling bring ancient Aboriginal knowledge into the networked urban age, blurring the boundaries between 'on reserve' and 'off reserve.'

At Yonge Street's second public event—this one on leadership and belonging—attendees looked to the past to find the future. 

The Riverdale Hub is a social innovation co-working space with a difference: its mission is to empower minority communities. Along the way, a renovation and a bold new presence on Gerrard Street in Toronto's Little India neighbourhood may help speed area's revitalization efforts and test a new funding model for non-profits at the same time.

As a classical Indian dancer, Iman Grewal has performed with some of the industry's major talents including Bare Naked Ladies, Apache Indian and Roach Killa. Two years ago, she decided to pass on the torch and her company Kama Entertainment is now ushering in the next wave of South Asian talent.

In 2001, after her four-year-old daughter was shot in the leg by corrupt Colombian officials, Liliana Angarita fled the country with her family. Now in Toronto she's devoting her life to human rights with her husband Mario Guilombo. Her efforts landed her in Canadian Immigrant Magazine's top 25 immigrants of 2011 list.

Brampton may not seem like a centre for hip hop talent, but in one cul-de-sac Jade Jager Clark has established a dance empire with international reach. She doesn't seem to care that she's only twenty-two years old.

Jameson Avenue's 1960s apartment buildings, packed with New Canadians, are home to many stories on migration. But only one of its residents has won a $20,000 provincial prize for telling these tales. Meet Ryad Assani-Razaki, a Benin-born, Parkdale-based scribe on the rise.

When people think of affordable housing, they don't always think of accessible housing, even though experts say the disabled make up huge swaths of low-income people. In Ontario, the numbers are jolting. Almost two million Ontarians are disabled. People like Danielle Svec are negotiating the slowly-improving system.

The PAYE employment program strives to find enough jobs for youth eager to get to work. The challenge now is to find a wide range of companies of varying sizes willing to participate in the program.

Eddy Robinson sees business as empowerment. An Anishnaabe native, he heads up a cultural business in Toronto, one he's currently revamping with the help of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business. To him, it's all about Aboriginal cultural and economic revitalization.

Toronto's architectural design firms beat their competition by ensuring they have no competitors and by tapping into the diverse and talented pool of designers and artists that live here. You might even be surprised where some of our firms have been working.