Since 2020, Skills for Change’s Spotlight Series has acted as a change evangelist in initiating more open discussions around socio-economic barriers that have plagued our societies, especially the racialized and marginalized communities.

As we start 2022 with a hope to serve more people and communities in need, we are ecstatic to collaborate with the Hot Docs' Citizen Minutes Project for hosting this year’s first Spotlight Series in a unique format. Hot Docs is not-for-profit organization dedicated to advancing and celebrating the art of documentary and creating production opportunities for documentary filmmakers

For this Spotlight Series, we will host 5 different sessions, featuring 6 short Hot Docs Citizen Minutes documentaries on different social themes focusing on barriers faced by racialized and marginalized communities followed by an interesting panel discussion with the filmmakers, the real-life heroes inspiring these documentaries and community organizations.

For our third session, we'll be discussing two shorts: the first will be "Militant Mother", about how in 1971, a group of mothers made their voices heard by blockading CN rail. We'll be joined by filmmaker Carmen Pollard for a discussion. Our second short will be "Jean Swanson: We Need a New Map", A profile of veteran activist and first-term Vancouver city councillor Jean Swanson. We'll be joined by filmmaker Teresa Alfeld. In addition, we'll also be joined by Nneka MacGregor, Executive Director at WomenatthecentrE. Both discussions will be moderated by Nidhi Khanna, Director, Programs Operations at Skills for Change.