Transcending the Non-Profit Complex: Lessons from Indigenous-Palestinian Worldbuilding

About the Series

Advancing Justice in the Community Food Sector is a series of four workshops designed for folks — especially BIPOC — working in community-based programs and organizations that revolve around food. Working in these spaces, it's crucial to have the latest tools, knowledge, and skills to build pathways for professional career advancement.

Through this workshop series, participants will learn and engage with subject matter around: BIPOC solidarity across the non-profit sector, storytelling as a tool for impact, and more.

About this Workshop

Transcending the Non-Profit Complex: Lessons from Indigenous-Palestinian Worldbuilding

This workshop invites food security and anti-poverty workers to critically unpack the NGO-industrial complex through Indigenous and Palestinian worldviews, examining how colonial systems shape our relationships, organising practices, and ultimately the scope of our political imagination. Together, participants will explore the tension between transactional, scarcity-based models of care and the grounded, reciprocal forms of community that sustain collective survival and resistance. Through reflection, dialogue, and tangible examples from the facilitators' experiences in grassroots organising and mutual aid work, the workshop asks what it means to move beyond depoliticised service work toward accountable, long-term solidarity rooted in shared principles and material action. Participants will leave with tools and entry points to interrogate the limitations of the non-profit model, reclaim their agency as political actors, and imagine forms of community care that exist outside colonial frameworks.

Our Speakers

Brianna Olson Pitawanakwat is an Anishinaabekwe, Indigiqueer and member of Wiikwemkoong Unceded First Nation. As a Birthworker, jingle dress dancer, harm reductionist and radical educator she is committed to principles of Indigenous liberation and an anti-racist/ anti-carceral future in her community. She currently co-leads Toronto Indigenous Harm Reduction and Native arts society, both 2-Spirit-led initiatives.

Maysam Ghani is a Palestinian educator, grassroots organizer and poet based in Tkaronto. In her organizing, she is committed to joint struggle across movements through practice and relationship, and currently supports the coalition work of 8th Fire Rising. Her poetry has been featured in the Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Anthology and the International Palestine Writes Festival. In her research, she is interested in the intersections of counterinsurgency, cultural resistance, and popular poetry rooted in the long lineage of Palestinian resistance culture.

Priority Ticketing

As part of our ongoing commitment to equity and justice, we are prioritizing access to these workshops for Black and Indigenous people and people of colour (BIPOC).

Priority tickets for these workshops will be made available for BIPOC individuals and BIPOC-led organizations and grassroots community groups who do not have access to large operating budgets to cover the costs of staff training. A limited number of General Admission tickets will also be available, and we will open up a waitlist as needed.

Logistics

All workshops in the series will take place online via Zoom. After registering for the event, you will have access to the online event page, where you can find the Zoom link once available. We will also email the Zoom details to all registrants closer to the date of the workshop.

Accessibility

FoodShare strives to host inclusive, accessible events that allow everyone to fully engage. To request an accommodation or for inquiries about accessibility, please contact jade at jade@foodshare.net.

• An option for closed captioning via Zoom will be available during the event
• A phone-in option will also be available

About FoodShare

FoodShare is a Toronto-based food justice organization, advocating for the right to food, and working to challenge the systemic barriers that keep people from accessing the food they need to thrive. Learn more at www.foodshare.net