2007 Women Of Distinction recipient Tamam McCallum: community development

Tamam McCallum

Catalyst for community growth

YWCA Toronto woman of distinction 2007, community development

Tamam McCallum has dedicated her life to social change. Through the development of innovative programs which have improved the lives of countless immigrant and marginalized women and children in Toronto, she has built solid foundations for organizations that have stood the test of time, government cutbacks, and community changes. She is an innovator and a visionary, identifying a community’s need and developing organizations, programs, services and publications aimed at addressing those requirements. Tamam McCallum is the 2007 Woman of Distinction for Community Development.

Born in Jamaica, Ms. McCallum grew up in the loving embrace of her strong-minded mother and under the influence of a large extended family, giving her the confidence and courage to explore new ideas, things and places. At twenty she traveled to London, England to study Theology. In 1970, she came to Canada to study English at the University of Toronto, where she completed a Bachelors degree and later a Masters in Education at OISE in Applied Psychology and Adult Education. Deeply influenced by the writings of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, she has focused her career on community work and education for social change.

Ms. McCallum is the architect of many of Toronto’s most innovative programs for women and children. In the seventies she sought funding for a research project to identify the employment needs of Portuguese, Latin-American and African-Caribbean women. Based on her findings, she established the first community organization in Canada designed to meet the specific needs of immigrant and refugee women, the Working Women Community Centre. For over thirty years, the centre has had a mandate of providing all women with access to meaningful employment. The centre continues to offer a range of services, including settlement, language and training, employment, health and wellness, public education and community development, to immigrant women in Toronto.

As a single mother in the eighties, Tamam McCallum was looking for a safe place in which to leave her son while she went off to work. She realized caregivers as well as parents needed a stimulating meeting place where they could go with the children for whom they cared. Looking for a supportive network of like-minded parents and caregivers, her need gave rise to another organization. Working in partnership with immigrant women, mothers and caregivers, the Toronto Board of Education, local and provincial governments, she worked to establish the College-Montrose Children’s Place. Today the centre is a registered charity dedicated to providing resources to families isolated due to language barriers and unaware of the resources available to them.

No stranger to issues of violence against women, Ms. McCallum has delivered therapeutic workshops for immigrant women and women of colour for many years. Working directly with women whose needs were not being met by mainstream counselling, Ms. McCallum designed one of the first models of the "Ex-residents Counselling Program," geared toward women who had experienced violence, accessed shelter or related services and were living apart from their abusers. Under the sponsorship of College-Montrose Children’s Place she pioneered a pilot training program, "Coming Together: Support Group for Immigrant Women" which led to the creation of a resource kit for counsellors that included handouts in Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese.

Ms. McCallum has an extensive career in counselling, having worked at Shirley Samaroo House (a shelter for abused women and children) and as a Mental Health Cousellor at Women’s Health in Women’s Hands Community Health Centre. A former Professor in the Faculty of Community Services at George Brown College, she currently works as a Counsellor at the Family Services Association of Toronto. Her latest initiative is Turtle House Art/Play Centre, another ground-breaking program for immigrant and refugee children, using play and expressive arts to address their trauma. This project will lay the ground work for the creation of a community-based approach to healing that allows children the freedom to express their emotions and interact in a peaceful and conflict-free environment.

Taken together, the body of her work has had a significant impact on the lives of immigrant and marginalized women and children. A beacon for so many, she is rightfully honoured as the 2007 Woman of Distinction for Community Development.