Members of the UFV and wider local community are invited to attend Stories of Place, a free, five-part public storytelling series built around a single question: What helps people feel they belong?
At each gathering, local storytellers share how belonging takes shape in this place — through welcome, home, opportunity, relationship, and voice. Together, the five gatherings trace a journey from simply being present in a community to being recognized as part of it.
Stories of Place Chapter 1: Belonging Begins with Welcome
Fri, Oct 23, from 3:15–6 pm
Abby B101 of the UFV Abbotsford campus. Spaces are limited.
Registration: forms.cloud.microsoft/r/bmL8LxKFxT
Registration closes on Tues, October 20. Event details will be shared by e-mail after registration closes.
Belonging often begins with something small: a name learned, a language recognized, an invitation extended. Chapter One asks what makes a person feel expected, rather than merely tolerated — and how the everyday acts of welcome we offer one another become the first foundations of belonging.
Meet the Authors
- Stephanie Ohlmann – Author of Hello Abbotsford and founder of It Starts With Hello, she will anchor the gathering through her UFV-funded research into the 117 languages spoken here. Her work follows how ordinary acts of welcome accumulate into belonging.
- Akberet Beyene – Her Geographies of the Heart reading will bring the welcome that is administered rather than offered: the border, the paperwork, the official who decides. It carries her from Eritrea through exile to a country of strangers — and to the few who saw a whole person.
- Albino Nyuol — His reading follows a child soldier out of South Sudan to Canada, and then to the other side of a settlement desk, where he has spent a decade receiving those who arrive. Few people have seen welcome from both ends so closely: the one who needed it, and the one who now decides how it is given.
This event is hosted by the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee of the Faculty of Education, Community, and Human Development in partnership with the Fraser Valley Human Dignity Coalition and the Human Dignity Project. Learn about the Stories of Place Project online. This project received financial assistance from the City of Abbotsford, Vancouver Foundation, and Abbotsford Community Foundation through the Neighbourhood Small Grants Fund, a project that encourages neighbourhoods to create positive social connection and build community strength.
For questions, please contact FECHD@ufv.ca.