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Honoring the Leadership of Black Women in Alberta Dunia Nur
D
unia Nur is a woman of African descent residing in Treaty 6 territory known as Edmonto, Alberta. She is the president of the African Canadian Civic Engagement Council (ACCEC), a national public affairs that protects and promotes people of African Descent’s dignity and human rights. Their work is intersectional and of a wide variety – at the heart of which lies the empowerment and development of people of African descent. ACCEC’s work as a grassroots organization meant that they carried on without support from governmental institutions for years. Their work was made possible thanks to the ongoing grassroots community support that supported ACCEC through social capital. Typically, the demographic that comes to ACCEC for support is community members who identify as African, Caribbean, and black, predominantly consisting of youths and women. Individuals come to ACCEC when they face challenges in navigating
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Dunia Nur is the cofounder of ACCEC
immigration, family, and criminal justice systems. ACCEC’S unique focus is on care models and intervention, emphasizing a cultural and intersectional lens. ACCEC court work program is recognized nationally, and people of African Descent, lawyers, social workers, mental health practitioners across the province reach out for ACCEC services which include advocacy, community reintegration, rehabilitation, an opportunity for employment, housing and a 24-hour support line for women and children fleeing violence. ACCEC’s court support program provides the following: bail plans, impact race and cultural assessment reports, assistance with pre-removal risk assessment from a cultural lens, support with family reunification by ensuring Black children apprehended are placed in kinship care that accommodates their developmental growth and cultural safety, ACCEC has a close relationship with the victim services department, ACCEC works closely with women targeted in the criminal justice system. LCCMedia spent some time with Dunia Nur recently. “We’ve been providing grassroots community court work programs, and we sustained it through commuLadiesCorner — Winter 2021
nity support and social capital. From there on, we went to do advocacy, and we collected data. There was the need to promote and protect people of African descent rights and dignity while also celebrating our history, and who we are as people; hence this became our mandate and purpose of existence.” Although Nur feels like they still have a long way to go, she has been doing this work for the past decade, and the only difference is society is finally catching up to the experience and realities of people of African Descent and in particular the experience of anti-black racism and the intersectional layers. In supporting and protecting the Black community, we intentionally celebrate our peoples’ significant contributions to society and worldwide in general. Nur states that all of ACCEC’s programs are designed from empowerment for all African descent people, particularly AfricanDiaspora youth, by bringing to their attention their ancestral lineage, heritage, and culture and how they have contributed to their contributions to the cultural and economic fabric of the Canadian society. Nur emphasized the significance of the embodiment of pre-colonial cul-
