Discrimination, inequality and injustice are present in every community in British Columbia. While each Community Brief tells the unique human rights story of a specific community, the issues themselves are not unique. This reflects the systemic nature of many human rights challenges and their deep roots across the province.

The Community Briefs offer a snapshot of how various human rights challenges manifest in different parts of B.C. and in different types of communities. They also seek to celebrate community strengths and actions being taken to promote and protect human rights in communities throughout B.C.

For the first cycle of this project, we chose communities that:

• do not typically receive a lot of research attention or opportunities to participate in provincial projects like this one
• are different from one another in terms of population size, geography, economy and demographics
• are located in different regions of the province, including two communities in Northern B.C.
• based on our initial outreach, had community partners who expressed strong interest and capacity to participate in this project

In creating the Community Briefs, our Office aimed to centre the perspectives of people with lived human rights experience and the organizations that support them. BCOHRC worked closely with community organizations and public libraries in the four communities that applied to act as Community Connectors for this project.

Community Connectors received funding and training to hold focus groups and World Café conversations with people with lived human rights experience. Many of these participants had existing relationships with the Community Connectors through their programs and services.

We chose to use this Community Connector model to honour and build on existing relationships, to help us hear from more people with lived experience of human rights challenges and to strengthen the capacity of B.C.’s network of human rights actors.

In total, this project had 11 Community Connectors that conducted 16 focus groups and World Café conversations with over 100 participants. The Community Connectors also played an important role in providing feedback on the initial drafts of the Community Briefs and input on the supplementary materials to make the Community Briefs as impactful as possible for people in their communities.