Michelle Dagnino (’98): Meaningful Risk-Taking by Nature and Nurture
As a celebration of the Loran Scholars Foundation’s core values of character, service, and leadership, and its challenge to scholars to take meaningful risks in service of others, we have asked members of our community to reflect on meaningful risks and what constitutes #risksforgood. Michelle Dagnino
(W. Garfield Weston Loran Scholar ’98), the Executive Director of Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre, submitted the following reflection as part of the series.
As the child of immigrants who came to Canada from South America as newlyweds in their late teens (!), risk taking is in my blood. I was the first in my family to go on to post-secondary education, although that did not feel like a risk due largely to the Loran community. Not only did this working-class Latina kid now have a fully-funded education, I had mentors and supports in place to help me navigate decision making options that were foreign to me — from degree majors, to summer jobs, to graduate work — Loran was there every step of the way.
I am a risk-taker by nature, although for racialized communities I also think risk taking is part of everyday life. Speaking out, asserting your knowledge, studying and working in spaces where your culture and race is in the minority, means that sometimes just by virtue of stating our presence we are taking a risk.
I took a year off during my undergraduate degree to work at a global trade union confederation — I travelled around the globe, speaking at the UN General Assembly, in OECD trade meetings, and to local governments, culminating in celebrating my 21st birthday in the halls of the United Nations in New York, months after 9/11. I took an enormous risk in taking a year off, asking Loran to support this new journey, and in moving to a foreign country, on my own at 19. But the biggest #riskforgood I took was in coming back to Canada. I could have stayed in Brussels — I was offered a permanent position, and I was part of a wonderful community of friends and colleagues. But my work during that time had also shown me that social change needed to be driven from the ground up, and I was itching to get back “home” to Toronto, where there was so much more for me to do in supporting my community.
I finished my undergrad, did my Masters, and then went on to law school, working as a front-line youth worker throughout that time. School was always a means for me to strengthen an internalized sense of social justice activism — everyone should have access to the opportunities that I have had to improve my circumstances and be allowed to thrive. My work as a youth worker led to me working across Canada and the US in supporting the development of programs that were led by young people, with an authentic voice on the issues that matter and impact young people. This passion for youth work also opened up doors that had me travelling across France, Poland and New Zealand, consulting with their local Youth Ministries and working with Ontario’s provincial government to develop and implement policy on best practices in supporting the healthy development of young people. What always seemed risky at the time, turned out to be a path of amazing opportunity for me and the opening of new doors.
After law school I left front line youth work and went into private practice for several years. I worked as a human rights and labour lawyer before returning to the social services sector. For the last eight years I have worked with the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre (JFC). The Jane/Finch Centre has been serving the residents of Jane and Finch, and north west Toronto more broadly for almost 50 years. And for almost that whole time, the residents of the area have faced higher rates of poverty, higher rates of youth violence, and less access to social supports than almost any other urban community in Canada. Leaving private practice for social services, is of all the #risksforgood I have taken, the largest risk of all. I left job security, a high income, and a career I had spent years training for, to go back to working in one of Canada’s most impoverished urban neighbourhoods.
COVID-19 has had significantly disproportionate impacts in Toronto’s poorest northwest neighborhoods. Much of Jane and Finch and its surrounding neighborhoods have positivity rates over 13%. Food insecurity is at an all-time high, and parents are afraid to send their kids to in-person learning. Yet, every day, the residents of Jane and Finch take risks. They take crowded public transit to get to the jobs that all Canadians rely upon them for — as Personal Support Workers for our elderly parents and grandparents; as the clerk at our local grocery store; as the coffee shop worker that we see daily. They leave their homes every day to continue to work, to continue their schooling, to continue their English as Second Language classes, to go to their citizenship prep classes, all so that they can continue to contribute to Canadian society. They fight for access to a community hub, to ensure that their neighborhood gets safe spaces to gather and commune. The risks Jane and Finch residents take every day to support us all is what allows me to continue to always be passionate about taking a #riskforgood.
