All the WOW events that I went to were great – WOW does give a sense of a community trying to improve its attraction and retention!

Caroline Andrew
Professor, University of Ottawa
In our city’s history, immigrants have always played an important role. They build our economic prosperity, diversify our culture, contribute to our social vitality.

Jim Watson
Mayor of Ottawa
OLIP helps to unite and share scarce resources for greater impact by working together in the field of student education.

Walter Piovesan
Associate Director of Education, Ottawa Carleton District School Board
The OLIP Council is committed to leadership.  In only a few years, we have a common vision and priorities, and are up to the task of implementing the Ottawa Immigration Strategy.

Salimatou Diallo
OLIP Council Vice Chair, Assemblée de la francophonie de l'Ontario
The City of Ottawa will continue to play a lead role in the implementation of the Ottawa Immigration Strategy, just as we did in the founding of OLIP.

Steve Desroches
City Councillor and Deputy Mayor of Ottawa
The Ottawa Chinese Community Service Centre is so happy to have joined the OLIP Health and Wellbeing Sector Table. It is clear that OLIP cares about immigrants and refugees and…

Wendy Tang, Ottawa Chinese Community Service Centre
I was happy to see integration to Algonquin territory and indigenous culture related programming in 2014 WOW. Please continue to involve local Aboriginal organisations and…

Linda Manning
WOW 2014 participant, Senior Fellow, University of Ottawa
The target beneficiary of the work of OLIP is the whole community. In this short period we have planted together important seeds for Ottawa’s development.  

Dick Stewart
OLIP Council
My nomination is an indication that our hard work in building Canada is recognized. All we do is to serve the community in return for embracing us when we needed it.  

Mehdi Mahdavi
Ottawa Immigrant Entrepreneurship Awards Nominee
The WOW seminar on immigrant women’s nutrition and health was a step in the right direction towards closing the gap between academic researchers and service providers.

Josephine Etowa
Associate Professor, School of Nursing, University of Ottawa

Discussion Themes and Outcomes

March 6, 2013

Immigrants continue to face multidimensional integration challenges , which means that settlement in their newly adopted country can come with a very high “transition cost.” Forum participants discussed ways of improving supports to newcomers to enable faster transitions and, consequently, contributions to the Ottawa community in four specific areas identified by Forum panelists:

  • Leveraging immigrants’ entrepreneuria spirit – Orange Zone
  • Leveraging immigrants’ skills through internships – Blue Zone
  • Leveraging immigrants’ civic contributions for greater progress in equity and inclusion – Yellow Zone
  • Leveraging immigrants’ cultural contributions for greater vibrancy and shared sense of belonging to our city – Green Zone.

Group discussion evolved around two questions:

  • What is needed to leverage the selected contribution (entrepreneurial; employment skills; civic and cultural)?
  • Who is best to do it and what creative collaborations are possible to achieve the goal?

To access a brief introduction to the issues and a summary of each group’s discussion outcomes, click here.