One of the big things we had to do when we rebranded our organization to become Unison, Generations 50+ was to change a whole ton of signage.
You don’t realize how many things have your name on it until you have to make sure they’ve all been replaced.
But one of our older signs still sits in the very front entryway of the Kerby Centre. It’s quite literally, the first thing you see when the doors open into the main entryway, right past the benches and the lone post office box.
It’s a welcome sign, but no ordinary one. It’s got welcoming words and phrases in a few dozen languages.
There are romance languages, Germanic ones, Slavic and those from Polynesia, East Asia and the Indian subcontinent.
I have said before that I often try to learn the “Canadianisms” of languages whenever I travel. These would include things like “sorry,” “excuse me” or “thank you.”
And here is one of those Canadianisms, on display, in as many languages as we could fit, right there as soon as you walk in. It might only have one or two words in each language, but it says much more than that.
When I see this, it reminds me that when you’re at the Kerby Centre, everyone — and that means everyone — is welcome.
And it’s important to remember who “everyone” is.
Close your eyes and picture in your mind an average group of about 10 seniors. Have an image? Perfect.
In Calgary, four out of every 10 people is a visible minority — defined by City of Calgary research as someone who is non-Caucasian in race or non-white in skin colour.
Did the image in your mind reflect that?
According to the statistics: over 120 languages are spoken in Calgary, 54 per cent of people moving here are coming from international markets.
Seven per cent of the population identifies as Muslim; four per cent identify as Sikh; three per cent as Hindu and two per cent as Buddhist. That’s about 150,000 people, total, between all four religions.
Our population is extremely diverse. And that means our seniors are diverse, too.
But diversity isn’t just about race, religion or nationality.
We have low-income seniors, and high-income seniors. We have folks who need mobility aids to get around and we have people who dance the afternoons away. We have people here who have high assistance needs and low-assistance needs. And we have everyone in between.
But just like the sign says at the front, and the way it’s been for the past 50 years: all are welcome here.
We recently came up with specific values that we use to guide our organization. Things that are important to us. We came up with these values — not by having a board or our CEO or president, or senior management dictate them to us — but by asking our staff, our volunteers and our clients what they thought was most important to them.
We had lots of ideas come to us. We meticulously went through the ones that were most popular, the ones that came up often when we asked folks: what about Kerby Centre is important or valuable; what do we represent?
Some are obvious: we value Respect. We value the Aging process. We value Compassion.
But one of the stand-outs — and maybe a surprise — was how many people said that diversity and inclusivity were so integral, so important to us as an organization.
And I think it’s because we’re made up of the same sort of folks we serve.
We are able to help out seniors in a variety of languages, because our staff and volunteers speak those same languages — often some of them as their mother tongue.
We are so helpful and understanding when it comes to recent immigrants, because many of our staff and volunteers went through the same thing.
It’s one thing to be committed to the idea of diversity, but here at Kerby Centre: we have 50 years of making it a reality, every single day.
When you walk in and see that sign, remember: everyone is welcome means everyone.
And we’re so happy to have you.
