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Food banks have become an institutionalized response to helping individuals and families gain access to food as wages have stagnated, employment becomes more precarious, and social entitlements have dramatically declined over the years. Food banks were supposed to be a temporary stop gap measure in response to the recession of 1980. Thirty-three years later, food banks have proliferated across Canada in assisting a growing population in need of their services. I present an analysis of how food bank suppliers use the concept of hunger in a fundraising campaign called Canstruction® to understand how it relates to people’s perception of this social problem in our society. This qualitative research study uses discourse analysis to unpack the solicitation discourse used at Canstruction® events held in Waterloo and Toronto, Ontario in 2014. I have collected data from three different groups: persons who designed and installed their artwork at the Canstruction® Toronto event; persons who volunteer at a food bank; and people who have food insecurity experience. The findings indicate a differentiated understanding of hunger within the solicitation discourse for each research group: Canstruction® participants, food bank volunteers, and persons with food insecurity experience. The Canstruction® participants’ absorption of the solicitation discourse produced a limited understanding about hunger in our society. The food bank volunteer group agreed with the solicitation discourse but their images of hunger illustrated deeper criticisms of the event and food bank system. The participant group with food insecurity experience expressed the greatest amount of criticism against the food bank’s solicitation discourse and their images of hunger reflected their psycho-social experience of living in poverty. Also, an overwhelming majority of research participants with food insecurity wanted a food bank system that was more responsive to their needs and that honoured human dignity. My study on the social construction of hunger portrayed by food banks highlights how this knowledge is reinforced, reproduced and challenged through a food drive that creates packaged food items into artwork and from images described by research participants. These insights have the potential to shift the discourse away from the branding of hunger as a matter of charity and move towards discussing its fundamental causes: poverty and social inequality. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

Abstract Existing healthcare treatments and services for people living with serious mental illness pose a challenge for both the service provider and the recipient of care. While recovery oriented care is a priority, many healthcare practices and contextual factors pose a barrier to recovery. This study augments our awareness of the authentic lifeworld of people living with serious mental illness with the aim of gaining insights that can be used to develop healthcare practices which support recovery. This study explored the subjective experiences of people living with SMI as they expressed them through co-creative songwriting. Through a hermeneutic phenomenological analysis based in the philosophical groundwork of Heidegger and Gadamer, a thematic representation of the lifeworld of people living with SMI was developed. The findings are described in three parts: becoming broken, becoming whole and experiencing the lifeworld as transformed. Becoming broken is explored in four themes including fragmented inner and outer worlds, pain, despair and suicide. Becoming whole is achieved through catalysts of change that include connection, the sacred, beauty, and resilience. This representation is depicted using a tapestry metaphor to picture the lifeworld as torn, mended and transformed. The findings demonstrate that transformation is a spiritual process. Additionally the potential impact of the study on stigma and perceptions of mental illness is discussed. The findings are considered within the framework of Antonovsky’s theory of salutogensis. A resulting salutogenic model of mental illness and mental health as transformation is proposed. The implications for theory, research and practice are discussed in relation to the areas of recovery, salutogenesis, positive psychology and spirituality. The study recommends greater inclusion of spirituality, creative processes, and a focus on positive psychology as underutilized resources to enhance healthcare for people living with SMI. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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Research on employment in Canadian AIDS service and allied organizations (AASOs) should recognize the unique experiences of immigrant women workers of African descent given their transnational HIV histories, working roles, relationship and responsibilities, interconnected identities and senses of belonging, and intersecting systems of oppressions they navigate within their working lives. Guided by decolonizing, anti-colonial, and transnational feminist thoughts, the Because She Cares study aims to understand the experiences of African women living with HIV who are employed in the HIV sector in the province of Ontario, Canada. Using performance narrative methodologies, this inquiry explored HIV-related work as agential, cultural and social practices of caring work; and deciphered the local and transnational interconnections to African women’s sensemaking of their work as HIV caring work. Ten African women with employment histories in Canadian AASOs participated as the Narrators. Using performance narrative methods based on oral traditions, I gathered, interpret and shared their stories of HIV caring work. In collaboration with the Narrators, I poetically “retold” interview narratives to embody the emotive resonance of the original telling and evoke the theoretical and political relevance of the sharing. Study findings illuminate the multiple self, communal and social modes of caring that emerged in women’s HIV-related work, the shifting responsibilization of African women living with HIV as carers, the intersecting systems of oppression African woman navigate in Canadian work spaces and strategies of care-full work that translocates “back home”. This study documents work experiences of African women whose HIV-related engagement is notable yet, typically overlooked in Canadian research on HIV-related employment and civic engagement. Decolonizing, anti-colonial, and transnational feminist thinking allowed me to use culturally responsive methodologies that highlight how HIV caring work becomes processes of identity and belonging, and its corresponding rights and responsibilities, within and across local and transnational contexts. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Guided by decolonizing, anti-colonial, and transnational feminist thoughts, the Because She Cares study aims to understand the experiences of African women living with HIV who are employed in the HIV sector in Ontario, Canada. Study aims include better understanding HIV-related work as agential, cultural and social practices of caring work and deciphering its local and transnational interconnections. Ten African women with employment histories in Canadian AIDS service and allied organizations (AASOs) participated as the Narrators. Using performance narrative methods based on oral traditions, I gathered, interpret and shared their stories of HIV caring work and “retold” narratives as poems. Study findings illuminate the multiple self, communal and social modes of caring that emerged in women’s HIV-related work, the shifting responsibilization of African women living with HIV as carers, the intersecting systems of oppression African woman navigate in Canadian work spaces and strategies of care-full work that translocates “back home”.

An extensive body of knowledge points to the intersection of violence against women and HIV as it is well-established that violence is ubiquitous in the lives of women living with HIV. Experiences of violence exist within a socio-legal context that criminalizes HIV non-disclosure. In Canada, the federal law requires people living with HIV to disclose their HIV positive status before a sexual encounter with a partner that may pose, according to the Supreme Court of Canada, a “realistic possibility of transmission.” The criminalization of HIV non-disclosure carries particularly negative consequences for women living with HIV. This thesis includes an analysis of data from the Women, ART, and the Criminalization of HIV (WATCH) Study, a qualitative, arts-based research study on the impact of the HIV non-disclosure law on women living with HIV in Canada. Grounded in an intersectional feminist framework, this thesis presents findings from the narrative and visual data collected from the three Ontario workshops in the WATCH study. This thesis explores how women living with HIV visually and narratively express and describe their experiences of violence in the context of the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure. The stories and artwork shared by participants demonstrate how the law used to criminalize HIV non-disclosure creates and exacerbates experiences of interpersonal and structural violence and surveillance in the lives of women living with HIV. This thesis offers important insights for reconceptualising violence against women living with HIV from a structural lens. This project demonstrates how violence stems from legal institutions that do not respond to the needs of women, and instead, further exacerbate marginalization, violence, and surveillance in the lives of women living with HIV. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)