Who are we? 

The Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative is a registered Workers Cooperative with a mandate to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate support to migrant, immigrant and refugee families from around the world. We are grassroots, hands-on organization that believes in fostering genuine, empowering, and often long-term relationships with our clients, communities, and each other to increase the health of individuals, families, and communities. 

We are seeking a part-time Legal Projects Coordinator. 

This position is half-time at 81.25 hours per month 

About the Role: 

The role of the Legal Projects Coordinator will be tailored to your unique gifts, and will be some combination of: 

• Reflective sessions with cultural brokers engaged in legal system navigation and public legal education and information with community members and leaders as well as legal system stakeholders, i.e. police, Crown Prosecutors, Justice Support Workers, etc.; 

• Direct practice support – walking alongside cultural brokers catalyze action in public legal education and information – i.e. resource and system navigation, facilitating productive working relationships and mutual understanding with colleagues in the justice system, and support groupwork, etc.; 

• Outreach and partnership formation with colleagues in the legal system;  

• Coordination, project management and facilitation; 

• Research, program development and evaluation; and 

• Participatory adult education. 

The families we serve are often in crisis, facing complex life circumstances without key supports. Ability to work with the child intervention and legal systems is important.  We are looking for someone with excellent relationship building skills with diverse colleagues within MCHB and in systems.  The ability to stay present during conflict, and support conflict resolution is essential. You may also be bringing colleagues together in groups for mutual support and participatory education.  There are also elements of advocacy for clients, colleagues, and community in general. 

Who are you? 

Working as an MCHB Legal Projects Coordinator is both challenging and rewarding work.  It requires a warm heart, a clear mind, and a deep willingness to learn not just new skills, but also to learn about yourself and others.  To be able to flourish in the work, you will need to be able to tolerate uncertainty, ambiguity, and what might feel like chaos at times.  These are some of the qualities you need to have: 

• You can take joy simply in establishing a trusting supportive relationship with another and walking alongside them in a world of systems and institutions not designed with them in mind. 

• You are humble, curious, and sincerely interested in learning from those around you including colleagues and the families we serve. 

• You are interested in growing and can acknowledge and learn from mistakes as well as successes. 

• You are comfortable with ambiguity and can rest in "not-knowing" who is right and who is wrong. 

• You can have empathy and compassion for everyone in a situation, even where there is conflict. 

• You seek to understand different perspectives to move towards well-being. 

• You work with tenacity in complex situations that have no easy answers without getting overwhelmed. 

• You think creatively and find solutions that are sometimes out of the box. 

• You value the spirit of a guideline rather than applying guidelines rigidly. 

• You know that caring for yourself is important and you are committed to building your health on many levels -physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. 

• You can be responsive, take initiative and be self-directed in an emergent and fluid environment. 

• You can assess and understand your own cultural identity, position and value base. 

We also value the following experiences and abilities: 

• Experience in working with Child Welfare. Legal System and/or other community support systems. 

• Familiarity with cultural humility, culturally responsive and safe practice  

• Familiarity with various pre-migration experiences and settlement challenges of immigrant families. 

• Familiarity with dominant culture and being able to navigate formal systems in Canada. 

• Excellent written English, ability to deeply listen, facilitate, and document and present themes of discussions. 

• Commitment to working with love towards social justice and equity. 

Ideally you would have the following knowledge or qualifications: 

• Knowledge of local health and social services, including our child protection and legal system. 

• Some training in or knowledge of holistic family support, casework, and community development. 

• Knowledgeable of family violence and its interplay with community dynamics. 

• Familiarity with the issues facing immigrant and refugee children, youths, and families. 

• The ability to speak and write fluent English. 

• A vehicle and a valid driver’s license are a definite asset. 

What will you do?  

MCHB Support Team work is varied and you will be working in many different environments and contexts.  You can expect to be surprised and challenged daily.  Here are some aspects to the work: 

• Responding quickly to requests for support from cultural brokers. 

• Providing support with verbal and written communication with colleagues in systems. 

• Supporting cultural brokers to connect families to needed resources and services within Edmonton, from services that meet the basic needs to those that enrich the functioning of the family. 

• Supporting cultural brokers to organize and facilitate groups. 

• Convening and facilitating multidisciplinary team meetings. 

• Documenting, analyzing and synthesizing qualitative and quantitative data and theoretical underpinnings of cultural brokering and collaborative practice. 

• Writing funding proposals, reports, and accompanying co-op members in meetings with systems, funders, and other partners. 

• Participating in the life of the Cooperative by attending meetings and professional development 

What will we do for you? 

A few of the most common things that people who work for MCHB say is that they feel accepted for who they are, that they feel trusted and able to find their own way to work creatively and that they love the sense of personal growth in the work. We actively foster a work environment that is caring, egalitarian in tone, and respectful of your creative energy.  We also believe in on-going professional development and gathering together in ways that fosters support and learning from each other.  

This position has a starting wage of $30-35/hour depending on your experience.

What are the next steps?   

Please send us a resume and cover letter that tells us about you and how your experience fits in with what we are looking for in a Broker.  In your cover letter: 

• Please include your experience working with marginalized communities and systems in Edmonton or Canada.  

• Please include something from your life experience that has called you to this type of work.  

• Please include the reason you have chosen Multicultural Health Brokers as a place you would like to work. 

Submit your resume by March 14, 2025 or direct any questions to Molly Wu at hr@mchb.org or 780-423-1973.