MISSION
WAYF aims to build capacity for marginalized and racialized Queer and Trans people, as well as connecting diasporic racialized Queer and Trans communities in order to create intentional dialogue that disrupts the heteronormative status quo. Our aim is to celebrate racialized Queer and Trans identities, creative endeavours, and achievements. Our work utilizes anti-oppression, anti-racist framework through the lens of trauma-informed and transformative justice practices.
vision
The WAYF Team comes together from diverse and interdisciplinary fields allowing our skills to complement each other, while maintaining a shared vision to programming for racialized and marginalized queer and trans people out of a shared experience of intersections of racism, transphobia, and homophobia. We have all grown up watching our community’s concerns ignored, seeing ourselves represented in negative ways (if at all). WAYF is about having the things we wish had existed when we were growing up. We want to educate and empower racialized artists, racialized Queers, Trans and those who experience various forms of intersectional marginalizations. We want to share and celebrate our identities, stories and history. We want to build resiliency and increase capacity for creative expressions, activism and social justice. We want to carve out a safer and sustainable community space that legitimizes and celebrates our achievements in the face of constant erasure and cultural appropriation. We want to create a platform to self-represent and self-validate.
WAYF aims to build capacity for marginalized and racialized Queer and Trans people, as well as connecting diasporic racialized Queer and Trans communities in order to create intentional dialogue that disrupts the heteronormative status quo. Our aim is to celebrate racialized Queer and Trans identities, creative endeavours, and achievements. Our work utilizes anti-oppression, anti-racist framework through the lens of trauma-informed and transformative justice practices.
We continue the work in strengthening solidarity with various marginalized and racialized groups. Currently, WAYF aims to serve communities that are most vulnerable within the diaspora of racialized groups. This includes, but not limited to those living within the intersections of marginalization—Racialized Queer and Trans people, Black and Indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, sex workers, newcomers and refugees and more.
WAYF aims to build capacity for marginalized and racialized Queer and Trans people, as well as connecting diasporic racialized Queer and Trans communities in order to create intentional dialogue that disrupts the heteronormative status quo. Our aim is to celebrate racialized Queer and Trans identities, creative endeavours, and achievements. Our work utilizes anti-oppression, anti-racist framework through the lens of trauma-informed and transformative justice practices.
We continue the work in strengthening solidarity with various marginalized and racialized groups. Currently, WAYF aims to serve communities that are most vulnerable within the diaspora of racialized groups. This includes, but not limited to those living within the intersections of marginalization—Racialized Queer and Trans people, Black and Indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, sex workers, newcomers and refugees and more.
HISTORY
Founded in 2016, WAYF Collective originally began as an art-based and activism program with the intention to address issues of agency that Pan-Asians (including, but not limited to Southeast Asian, South Asian, East Asians, Asian-Pacific Islander), living on Turtle Island. Our aim was to examine and reframe the experiences in defining our identities, visibility, and representation. We did this by offering workshops, events, and creating online platform for self-representation.
Working from an intersectional, anti-oppression framework to empower Asians to develop critical art practices and build activist spaces that challenge dominant culture after decades of collective silence. During our first few years, our aim was to celebrate Asian identities and achievements, build capacity for Asian-identified youth, and connect diasporic Asian communities so that we can create intentional dialogue that disrupts status quo.
Over the years, we recognized more and more the need and the value in fostering relationships, building solidarity, being inclusive, having difficult conversations, and continuous reflexivity on our positionality, ways to navigate conflict, addressing tension, accountability and actively listening to the various narratives of oppression.
We continue the work in strengthening solidarity with various marginalized and racialized groups and aim to serve communities that are most vulnerable within the diaspora of racialized groups. This includes, but not limited to those living within the intersections of marginalization.
Working from an intersectional, anti-oppression framework to empower Asians to develop critical art practices and build activist spaces that challenge dominant culture after decades of collective silence. During our first few years, our aim was to celebrate Asian identities and achievements, build capacity for Asian-identified youth, and connect diasporic Asian communities so that we can create intentional dialogue that disrupts status quo.
Over the years, we recognized more and more the need and the value in fostering relationships, building solidarity, being inclusive, having difficult conversations, and continuous reflexivity on our positionality, ways to navigate conflict, addressing tension, accountability and actively listening to the various narratives of oppression.
We continue the work in strengthening solidarity with various marginalized and racialized groups and aim to serve communities that are most vulnerable within the diaspora of racialized groups. This includes, but not limited to those living within the intersections of marginalization.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Image: One Spoon, One Dish Wampum Belt. The belt is attributed to the Royal Ontario Museum. Reproduction: Richard D. Hamell 10/03/2010
We want to honour and express gratitude to the First Nations, Inuit and Métis people living on Turtle Island whose sacred land we are on right now. This has been the site of human activity for 15000 years. WAYF is situated on the sacred traditional territory of Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. Tkaranto (aka Toronto) is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands.
We are on the territory of the Dish With One Spoon Agreement, which was made between the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas and Haudenosaunee that bound them to share the territory and protect the land. All newcomers were invited into this treaty over the years. This is an agreement to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.
The “Dish” or sometimes called the “bowl” represents the Great Lakes. We all eat out of the dish with one spoon. That means we need to share the responsibility of ensuring the dish is never empty. That includes taking care of the land and creatures we share.
Today, the land that we are standing on is still the home to many the First Nations, Inuit and Métis people from across Turtle Island.
We invite others to think about the past and present-day realities of these communities, and to continue to holistically question colonial practices that disrupt connections to families, homes, and the Earth. It is our collective responsibility to recognize our colonial histories and present-day implications, to honour, protect and sustain this land.
We are on the territory of the Dish With One Spoon Agreement, which was made between the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas and Haudenosaunee that bound them to share the territory and protect the land. All newcomers were invited into this treaty over the years. This is an agreement to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.
The “Dish” or sometimes called the “bowl” represents the Great Lakes. We all eat out of the dish with one spoon. That means we need to share the responsibility of ensuring the dish is never empty. That includes taking care of the land and creatures we share.
Today, the land that we are standing on is still the home to many the First Nations, Inuit and Métis people from across Turtle Island.
We invite others to think about the past and present-day realities of these communities, and to continue to holistically question colonial practices that disrupt connections to families, homes, and the Earth. It is our collective responsibility to recognize our colonial histories and present-day implications, to honour, protect and sustain this land.