Category: digital literacy

This November 2025 Refugee 613 webinar highlights early findings from the 2025 MTM Newcomers Survey and explores how to apply them in real settings, in ways that are practical and won’t add to your workload. The session reviewed communication patterns and gaps that affect outreach, program design, funding applications, and community partnerships.

CERIS – The Ontario Metropolis Centre was one of five research centres that promoted policy-relevant research about immigration, settlement, and diversity in Canada. It existed from 1996 to 2013. CERIS maintained a useful virtual library of reports, working papers, and more. When CERIS closed, that repository was lost. I was able to download 408 documents before the repository was lost. While I've been wanting to post them all individually, I haven't been able to, and wanted to share the reports.

Apparently, this survey may close tonight so here it is with some comments from me. Context? From IRCC's slide deck: "The purpose of this presentation is to solicit your early thoughts and co-generate ideas about how we can adapt the Settlement and Resettlement Programs to better suit the needs of clients over the next few years in a context of reduced funding and lower immigration levels."

Putting aside the fact that the national call for proposals and resulting approval and implementation process was devastatingly chaotic, I found it useful to take a dive into the government of Canada's proactive disclosure site, focus on grants and contributions. This article includes projects I found that are digitally/tech related, which might be of interest to you.

The Switchboard Confluence event in June 2025 brought together technology innovators and refugee resettlement professionals to reimagine newcomer support through emerging technologies. Participants shared practical tools, techniques, and examples of how ethical and affordable technologies can address current resettlement challenges, with an emphasis on reaching and serving clients who are not located in proximity to services and resources.

Are you asking your clients about their digital access, literacy, and comfort as part of your intake or assessment processes? You should be. Here are some questions you can and should add to your intake and assessment flow to help you understand your clients and make better technology decisions.

We don't talk a lot about the user experience in our sector. But we should. Especially as we know that Newcomers, like all of us, are looking for frictionless access to information and progress in their Settlement journey, and expect exceptional service from us all. And why wouldn't they? They, like all of us, experience frictionless digital and other service experiences elsewhere. They increasingly expect it from sector service providers. But what does it mean?

I originally presented this at the Arab Community Centre of Toronto's Josoor Project Conference in March 2024: "Digital Inclusion: From Research to Application - Opportunities, Challenges and Strategies." You can view the video as well as read my full remarks in text.

Your audiences are increasingly reading your reports and PDF documents on mobile devices. You should want them to be as readable and accessible as possible on smartphones as they are on devices with larger screens. I've posted a number of publications on my site recently that are not at all mobile-friendly. Don't make that mistake. So here are some tips to keep in mind to ensure that the people you want to read your documents can and will.