Abdirizak Karod is the executive director of the Somali Centre for Family Services. When he took over the Centre in 1995, there were no staffs and the centre occupied one office. Today, the Centre has 22 full time and par time staffers who are multiethnic and provide Multilanguage services; the centre occupied 6000 sq. ft. office space.
Karod has dreamed the centre to become multiethnic and reflected the Canadian Mosaic. Now, there are eight (8) non- Somalis of different ethnic back ground who are working in the centre and still hopes to employee more because he feels and empathize other immigrants issues. Mr. Karod has worked with ethnic organization such as Jewish community of Ottawa, catholic family Services, Rwandan community, Ottawa Carleton District School board and Arab community of different sects (Shia and Sunni) to create a synergy between those communities. …show more content…
Karod believes without employment integration will be difficult because communities are not intermingling and sharing their unique cultures and this will creates isolation for both the emigrants and hosted community. Therefore, he built with very outstanding network of different organizations he has advocated on behalf of the community to employ emigrants. Collaboration between Somali centre and Jewish Family Services facilitated the mentorship project where the Jewish professionals’ mentored Somali mentee ;the result was an imaginable, for this year alone, 20 Somali professionals has landed good paying jobs because of matching professionals between two communities that some people think they are enemies, but the opposite is true. In addition, two young Somalis joined the Ottawa police services, and this made the total of six
Karod has dreamed the centre to become multiethnic and reflected the Canadian Mosaic. Now, there are eight (8) non- Somalis of different ethnic back ground who are working in the centre and still hopes to employee more because he feels and empathize other immigrants issues. Mr. Karod has worked with ethnic organization such as Jewish community of Ottawa, catholic family Services, Rwandan community, Ottawa Carleton District School board and Arab community of different sects (Shia and Sunni) to create a synergy between those communities. …show more content…
Karod believes without employment integration will be difficult because communities are not intermingling and sharing their unique cultures and this will creates isolation for both the emigrants and hosted community. Therefore, he built with very outstanding network of different organizations he has advocated on behalf of the community to employ emigrants. Collaboration between Somali centre and Jewish Family Services facilitated the mentorship project where the Jewish professionals’ mentored Somali mentee ;the result was an imaginable, for this year alone, 20 Somali professionals has landed good paying jobs because of matching professionals between two communities that some people think they are enemies, but the opposite is true. In addition, two young Somalis joined the Ottawa police services, and this made the total of six