Canada Is Supporting Immigrant Women To Play Sports

03 Mar 2020

Kruti Bhadarka has been a consistent participant at the Moosejaw Immigrant Welcome Centre since she migrated to Saskatchewan province in 2013. The community organization grants a mixture of services to newcomers comprising sports programming that is tailored to immigrant women.

They have events two times in a month,” Bhadarka said. She said that she tries to attend both if feasible because who doesn’t like to go hang out with individuals and who doesn’t like free events. She also said that she doesn’t have family members here so that is her family, so she spends a few of her evenings with them.

Taking up the latest physical activity or sport is one way to hang out with friends and also integrate into the new community, but research reveals that immigrant women and girls are far less likely than immigrant men to engage in sports.

Various barriers prevent women and girls from engaging in sports. Mothers, for example, may encounter difficulties when their attention is concentrated on caring for their children. Parents do not want to give permission to their daughters for playing sports, or may not have the required budget to cover enrollment and costs of equipment. Immigrant women and girls may also be discouraged by language boundaries, cultural variations such as dress codes, or the worry of being stereotyped and racialized. Organizations over Canada are working to overcome these difficulties that stop immigrant women from engaging in sports.

Several Organizations are Supporting Immigrant Women

A non-profit organization named Canada's Association for the Women Sport and Physical Activity Advancement (C.A.A.W.S) collected a list of suggestions to overcome these difficulties. Through a grant from Refugees, Immigration and Citizenship Canada (I.R.C.C) they can provide funding for twenty community organizations over Canada to tailor programs for immigrant women. Practically every province in Canada, except Newfoundland & Labrador, had a minimum of one community to associate with C.A.A.W.S. Their funding started in 2018 and will close in Jun 2020.

The Prince Edward Island Newcomers Association to Canada went from offering a median of 1 activity per month to about 3 activities per week with the guidance of C.A.A.W.S. The organizers are now in consultations with how they are going to proceed later the funding ends in this summer.

The Immigrant Services Nova Scotia Association (I.S.A.N.S) in Halifax can strengthen its programming by funding, and provide spaced childcare while the famous women-only swimming lessons, as a component of several other activities, along with the track, field, and hiking.

Through the funding tenure, these organizations can concentrate on executing and improving programs that would help immigrant women and girls, a group that is growing as Canada admits more newcomers every year.

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