On November 18, 2021, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board hosted students, staff and families for a Transgender Day of Remembrance webinar. The webinar aimed to help participants learn more about transgender identity and support for trans and gender diverse students, and was an opportunity to hear stories of resilience from transgender folks who are thriving.
This event is part of OCDSB’s ongoing commitment to supporting trans and gender diverse students in our District through ongoing staff training, parent and student workshops, virtual drop-in groups and school library texts.
For additional questions about support for trans and gender diverse students, contact Kusha Dadui, the OCDSB Trans and Gender Diverse Student Support Coordinator, at [email protected].
Know more about the panellists at this webinar:
Kim Ninkuru is a multimedia artist born in Bujumbura, Burundi. In Canada since 2009, she has been living and working in Montreal and Toronto.
Using video and sound performance, story-telling and installation work, she creates pieces that give her the chance to explore and express rage, love, desire, beauty, or pain in relation to her own body, mind and soul. Although her art is very personal, she is committed to speaking out about the liberation of black women and femmes everywhere.
Her work heavily questions our preconceived notions of gender, race, sexuality and class. It is grounded in the firm belief that blackness is past, present and future at any given moment.
Kim Ninkuru’s work has been shown in numerous galleries and exhibitions including the Museum Gardiner for Hashtag Solidarity, Trinity Square Video, Xpace Cultural Centre, Studio 303, as well as part of the 2019 Toronto Biennial Art Festival amongst others. Her work appears in the anthology Other Places: Reflections on Media Arts in Canada by Deanna Bowen.
Sapphire Woods (they/them) is a Black of Caribbean descent shapeshifter, gender non-conforming educator, Virgo sun and Aquarius moon living on and intrinsically inspired by Algonquin territories and its forests. In order to thrive, they spend a lot of time (re)learning how to keep their heart soft and strengthen their relationship to self-conservation while staying active in their favourite love language - acts of service.
Always on their mind: ways we can move fluidly in our relationships that honour dignity and respect for our intersecting identities. On most weekdays, you can find them plotting ways to organize mutual aid, using someone's student login to download articles on the Shango Baptists in Trinidad and talking to their Granny on the phone.
Ziva Gorani is a human rights advocate and spokesperson for the rights of trans, Kurdish, Syrian, refugees. An international public speaker with a degree in computer science majored in A.I. and has a standing record working with researchers in thé Academia from around the world. Winner of the Global Health Educational Initiative for 2019. Subject in the winning podcast in the Canadian Ethnic Media Award 2018. Nominated for Everyday Political Citizen award and Waterfront Magazine award. Member of the Syrian Women Political Movement and an independent data analyst in the human experience in work environments. Currently she is working on a documentary about her life and soon to be a trained actor from George Brown Collège.