Juliet ‘Kego Ume-Onyido – Keynote
Bio coming soon
Keira McPhee
Sunflower Facilitation & Counselling Co-op
Keira’s work as a counsellor and facilitator began 30 years ago in a feminist organization engaged in ‘unlearning oppression.’ Guided in practice by elders, teachers, mentors and healers, guiding is a metaphor Keira often uses to describe how she shows up as a therapist and as a facilitator. Their practice is grounded in experiencing and growing a sense of ourselves as an integral part of community and nature. Keira loves Sunflower’s focus on healing ourselves in relation to the world and times we live in.
Michelle Tsutsumi
Sunflower Facilitation & Counselling Co-op
Michelle is learning to be in better relationship with self, as well as with community, land and water by exploring her responsibilities as a settler with Scandinavian, European, and Japanese ancestry. This personal process is supported through her work as a facilitator and small-scale organic farmer on Secwepemc territory. Her facilitation practice weaves together processes from her past work life providing body-centred trauma therapy and collectively tending to safer spaces that can hold the tension of curiosity and care.
Zanna Ekeroth
Sunflower Facilitation & Counselling Co-op
Zanna works as a facilitator on the stolen lands of the Syilx people. Outside of facilitation work, she spends her time as a social action organizer and engaging in mentorship programming, climate activism, early childhood education and circular business modelling. Holding care and relationships at the center of the work she does, Zanna is always curious to dive into participatory processes and collective problem-solving that helps to find solutions anchored in deep trust, joy and redistribution of power.
Zsuzsi Fodor
Sunflower Facilitation & Counselling Co-op
Zsuzsi works as a facilitator on Snuneymuxw territory. She holds Jewish and French ancestry, rooted in liberatory responsibility as a settler to these lands. Zsuzsi’s background is as a radical planner who’s worked mostly in food justice. She’s jumped around through many institutions and sure feels like she’s found a home in the workers co-op world with Sunflower.
Joseph Luri
Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative
Joseph Luri Kichere, commonly known as Joseph Luri, is a respected natural community leader. He is one of the original members who founded the Africa Centre and made Edmonton his home in 1998. Joseph is a true community-minded individual with a passion for community development. He is a founding member of the Sudanese Christian Fellowship and the South Sudanese Community Association in Edmonton.
Joseph Luri enjoys soccer, watching hockey, and football. He has supported students while working in schools as a settlement practitioner between 2007 and 2014. With a background in business, Joseph holds a Bachelor of Commerce Degree and a Diploma in Social Work. He has been honoured with numerous awards, including the Provincial Crime Prevention Award twice and the Men of Honour Award.
Norma Mora
Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative
Norma Mora has been working with Multicultural Health Brokers for almost five years, mostly supporting families involved with Children Services. Her first language is Spanish and many of her clients are women, who are very isolated and have difficulties accessing various services due to language barrier and domestic violence. She came to Canada in 1999 with her husband and soon after became a mother of two children. She lived in Vancouver for thirteen years and moved to Edmonton in 2012.
Norma has a dental medicine degree from her home country, Colombia, and completed a graduate diploma program in Global Health from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. In the past, she worked with the non- profit sector supporting families with children 0- 6 years old, and with the Edmonton Public school board as Educational Assistant. She has volunteered with different community and health organizations and is very passionate about working with vulnerable individuals and families to advocate for their rights, help them understand the systems and access the services they require to have a better life in Canada.
Tigist Dafla
Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative
Tigist hails from northeast Africa’s tiny Eritrea, but she grew up in now- nemy Ethiopia, and married an Ethiopian. Tigist is also one of the first cultural brokers when the Coop started in 1998 serving the Ethiopian and Eritrean communities. She speaks multiple languages – Amharic, Tigrinya, Oromo among others. She also served on the MCHB Board formany years.
Tigist has worked as a Settlement Counselor and Outreach Worker for the past 20 years. In these roles, she has developed many useful programs for immigrants, youth, and refugee women. She has promoted awareness of gender-specific issues such as female genital mutilation in the larger African community. Tigist has worked closely with core groups of the Canadian Council of Refugees and represented it at the World Conference Against Racism in 2001. She has helped launch the Injera project to bring EPS and refugee communities together to end violence. She has also educated 30 cultural brokers to prevent family violence in ethnocultural communities.
