Oakville Fire department's much-coveted culture-awareness training for its next recruit class of Fire Prevention Officers will resume in person next month-- after being impacted by COVID disruptions for the last two years.
The Halton Multicultural Council (HMC Connections), a leading settlement agency, provided this training for the first time to the Fire department recruits in 2019. Despite the global pandemic, HMC Connections has trained 122 firefighters so far. It recently ran a four-hour virtual cultural awareness session for the January 2022 recruit class.
Deputy Fire Chief Kalpana Rajgopalan reflected on the partnership, saying, "In 2018, the Oakville Fire Prevention and Training divisions provided an educational seminar to HMC Connections' clients about emergency response services, including fire safety information for newcomers to Canada. That resulted in both the OFD and HMC Connections identifying an opportunity for information exchange."
During the consultation with leaders of diverse communities before COVID-19, the HMC Focus group had learnt about numerous cultural practices that increase the risks of fires in households. For example, they found a prevalence of cultural habits such as:
- Use of candles in indoor celebrations
- Use of electric heaters as clothes-dryer
- Cooking practices on high flames
- Overheating of electric converters
- Portable tabletop coffee making burners
- Putting burnt coal with food in the oven to get barbecue flavour
- Burn charcoal and incense and leave them unattended for long hours
- Heating food directly on the stove and leaving it to burn
- Smoking hookah/Shisha at home or garage and turning off the smoke alarm to avoid triggering it
The Fire Deputy Chief commended HMC Connections for "offering meaningful and actionable insights to adopt a culturally-aware service lens." She also observed how the training program "has opened many positive conversations for Oakville firefighters about equity, diversity and inclusion."
The culture-awareness training is primarily designed for the frontline staff in direct contact with "our growing and diverse community".
Speaking of the training, Deputy Fire Chief Rajgopalan highlighted that diversity and inclusion are among the top priorities for OFD and the Town of Oakville. The Town "is committed to learning about and promoting a culture of inclusion by providing accessible and equitable programs, services, and facilities to residents and staff," she added.
Hanadi Almasri, HMC Connections' Director of Social Innovations & Enterprises, plans to expand this training to all other cities in Halton this year to reduce the risk of fires in multicultural communities.