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The University of Winnipeg

FEED YOUR MIND Virtual Event Series

Fri. Apr. 8, 2022

Global College is excited to resume "FEED YOUR MIND" talks virtually. Every year, we feature speakers from our Faculty and the University of Winnipeg's broader community to welcome our new students to our Faculty and reunite existing Global College students with their peers and Human Rights Faculty. Our speakers present their research, give our students an opportunity to "feed their mind" out of the classroom settings, and guide our students to explore potential career pathways. This series of talks is not only open to the public but is also free of charge.

Global College hosts Dr. Lisa Forman on Wednesday, March 16, 12:30 - 1:30 pm. With her research interest focusing on the right to health in international human rights law and human rights and COVID-19, Dr. Forman's talk will address a timely and important question "What has COVID taught us about the Future of the Right to Health?" 

Dr. Lisa Forman is the Canada Research Chair in Human Rights and Global Health Equity and an Associate Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto in Canada. She is an international human rights law scholar whose research explores how the right to health may advance health equity, including in relation to access to medicines, universal health coverage, global health policy, pandemic responses and COVID-19.

Dr. Forman’s research has produced over 100 publications and has been supported by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the European Commission, the World Health Organization, the Connaught Fund and the Lupina Foundation. Dr. Forman qualified as an attorney of the High Court of South Africa, with a BA and LLB from the University of the Witwatersrand. Her graduate studies include a Masters in Human Rights Studies from Columbia University and a Doctorate in Juridical Science from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law.

Date: WED, March 16, 2022
Time: 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Title: "What has COVID taught us about the Future of the Right to Health?"
Location: ZOOM meeting format. This format allows you to see other attendees of the talk, ask questions directly, and exchange ideas. Please contact us at global.college@uwinnipeg.ca for the meeting link! Attendees will receive a UW Diversity Foods voucher (worth $10) after the event for their participation and support.  

PAST EVENTS:

Sandra Delaronde's "Implementing the 231 Calls to Justice" talk focused on the history leading to the National Inquiry and the findings. She addressed the National Action Plan and the role we all play in ending this national tragedy. 

Sandra is a Grandmother, Mother, Sister, Leader, Coach, Consultant. Sandra seeks to integrate traditional wisdom and knowledge with designing and implementing systems that acknowledge the complexity of challenges in our lives. She is dedicated to working with people and communities in developing our highest capacity and consciousness as people while preserving and protecting our mother earth and all her resources of which we are one. Her work emphasizes the relationships between personal and social transformation to ensure that vision and intention result in transformational change. Sandra holds her Master of Arts degree in Leadership and Training and was awarded a Doctor of Laws Degree from the University of Winnipeg in June 2021 for her work on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Girls and gender-diverse individuals and on behalf of Indigenous women and girls. Sandra has also worked with a wide variety of teachers across different faith traditions. She brings together traditional spiritual wisdom with contemporary insight to co-create transformation in our inner and outer selves.

Via Dolorosa: Stories of Syrian Refugee Women During the War on Syria and Their Migration to Canada sheds light on the sacrifices that Syrian refugee women made before and after coming to Canada in 2016. It shows the amazing resilience these women possess in facing the darkest and harshest of conditions. These women share their stories about war and migration that they lived through in the last decade, after the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War. The sounds of bombs, people screaming, the crying of children, thick black smoke everywhere, corpses on the ground, escaping in the dark night, sleeping in animal pens and under trees are all experiences these Syrian women faced. Feelings of fear, hunger, and loss left them feeling hopeless. 

Stuck in their hearts and minds is the pain of the war that they endured that is still ongoing today, every day in various regions in Syria, which led and continues to lead to the displacement of millions of Syrians, causing them to live in tents and in inhumane conditions. Our book describes suffering, resilience, helplessness; it describes hope, strength and weakness. In their stories, life finds its true meaning where despair and hope meet, and where sickness and wellness meet; as well as where fatigue and attempt, defeat and victory, and death and life meet. On their journey to Canada, after years of trauma in a distant, strange country, ignorant of its language, culture, and laws, these women begin tirelessly trying to collect sweet memories, hoping that the painful memories of the war will make them forget, or at least ease its impact on their hearts, so they can be set free and discover a land far away from fear and oppression.

Dr. Kathy Watad was born in Nazareth of Galilee, in occupied Palestine in 1948. She left for university in Jerusalem, and for two decades she worked as a university professor in the field of Teacher Education. She later moved with her family to Canada, where she works in the field of Education and family consultation, and is active in the issue of empowering immigrant women and relief humanitarian work. She has written and published two books, A Taste of Immigration and Echoes of a Soul, as well as three bilingual children's books. She is also the owner of a successful business of empowering cards. 

Nur Watad was born and raised in Jerusalem, and later left with her family to live in Canada. Today, she is a social and human rights activist and is currently completing her degree in Media and Journalism. She has co-authored writing three bilingual children's books alongside her mother, Dr. Watad.

Our "Feed Your Mind" talks offer great advantages, even in the absence of in-person communication:

  • You still get all information and new ideas on the topic;
  • You can ask questions in the 'Chat Room' or send questions prior to the talk; 
  • You reduce the time commuting to/across campus to attend the event;
  • You can attend the entire presentation from your comfort zone at home;
  • The event is still FREE of cost;
  • In support of your commitment and in support of our campus, the first 25 attendees will receive a UW Diversity Foods voucher (worth $10) after the event.