ACAM Dialogues Episode 09: An Interview with Jocelle Refol (Hosted by Isa S. You, feat. Jocelle Refol)
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ISA: The Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies Program would like to acknowledge that this podcast was recorded on the traditional, unceded, ancestral homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), and Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.
Hello and welcome to the ACAM podcast. We hope that this podcast can be a way to continue building connections between ACAM students, staff, faculty and community partners, while also providing our community members with a platform to share similar work they’ve been doing during this time. I’m your host Isa.
Today we’ve got an episode from the vault, although this was recorded this past summer, the topics still feel relevant as ever.
Our guest this week is Jocelle Refol, Events Coordinator and Campaign Lead at Sliced Mango Collective, as well as the previous Peer 2 Peer Summer Program Leader at Collingwood Neighbourhood House Society. We sat down with her to chat about strategies for community organizing, social media as a useful tool in advocacy, and the importance of accessible summer programs for youth. Let’s take a listen:
ISA: Can you introduce yourself to our listeners?
JOCELLE: Yeah, my name is Jocelle Refol. I use she/her pronouns. I’m a second generation Filipino immigrant based in so-called Burnaby. And I am the Event Coordinator and Campaign Lead with Sliced Mango Collective.
ISA: And as the Asian Canadian and Asian migration studies program, we’re always interested in hearing about people’s experiences with migration. So can you tell us a bit more about your and your family’s migration story?
JOCELLE: Yeah, for sure. I think something that second generation folks may be able to relate to, is that feeling of distance, and that experience of not having a direct experience with migrating from a different country. So my family immigrated, or my parents immigrated in the early 90s. My dad came here for work, he was one of his first siblings to come to Canada. And then gradually, he and his other siblings began to sponsor other family members to come to Canada here. And then my mom actually didn’t come to Canada until she married my dad because she worked as a nurse abroad in the Philippines, and then also in Saudi Arabia. And so she came here gradually when they decided to get married. And yeah, that’s pretty much the extent of my migration story.
ISA: And can you explain what slice mango is for our listeners who may not be familiar with it?
JOCELLE: So Sliced Mango Collective is a group of youths with the goal to facilitate a sense of belonging for Filipino youth in so-called Vancouver. The main ways that we do that is through events focused on art and culture, and just creating opportunities for youth to connect with their roots.
ISA: And how was Sliced Mango Collective started?
JOCELLE: Yes, so I’m an Event Coordinator. I’m not one of the founders of Sliced Mango Collective. Sliced Mango Collective was founded by Kathleen and Claire, two lovely human beings who saw a gap in what was offered for Filipino youth in Vancouver. And so they also have a passion for art with their background in music and writing. And they really want to create that space to connect their interests in art and culture, with their passion for creating space for Filipino youth, and for them to explore their identities. And so they created a little core team, which I’m a part of, and they recruited us. And then since then we’ve been organizing events, and also putting together zines.
ISA: And why did you get involved at the Sliced Mango Collective?
JOCELLE: Yeah, so I remember going in high school. I was surrounded by quite a few Filipino youth, like we had a really strong Filipino community. But I have, growing up as a second generation immigrant, I’ve always felt very disconnected from Filipino culture. Okay, I knew I was Filipino. I knew it was my roots. I had been to the Philippines a couple times. I never felt like I was truly proud about being Filipino, or that I could be like loud and proud about being Filipino, at least in Vancouver. And so it’s just that sense of disconnection. Like my main experiences were in my high school or with my family like those were the Filipinos that I connected to. So why I wanted to join Sliced Mango was to be able to one be able to kin to connect with other Filipino youth and, just in general, other Filipino community members that I have not met and that are not my family, and to just build those relationships and I allow myself to reconnect with my roots and my identity. And so I think that also speaks to the whole intention of Sliced Mango is to hold space for Filipino youth to explore that themselves. And so that was really a big reason why I decided to join, is to create that space for Filipino youth to do the same.
ISA: I see and what kind of events have you worked at or worked on at Sliced Mango.
JOCELLE: It’s been a little bit difficult because we launched during the pandemic. And so we knew that there was a really big oversaturation of online events. So we really just tried to keep it slow, to take it slow with our event planning. And so our first event wasn’t until September of 2021. Which was about a year from now, where we planned our first in person event for youth to just connect with each other kind of like an opportunity to mingle and to connect. And we just, it was just a very nice casual space for Filipino youth to meet each other, and talk about culture and their experiences and also, hopefully see the zine that we were about to launch at the time. Since then, we’re still trying to figure out about what other events we want to put on within our capacities, and also how we might be able to best collaborate with other organizations as well.
ISA: And so what was the Slice of Support Campaign?
JOCELLE: Yes, so a question that we get asked a lot. Is that, like, did we foresee or like, picture getting involved in that so early on. But the thing is, we actually launched in January 2021. And we were mainly focused on the zine, that was our primary project. And then in March 2021, myself and other members of Sliced Mango Collective, heard that there was a redevelopment proposal that would displace the Filipino and Chinese businesses that were in that block of the Joyce Collingwood area. And so we reached out to other community members to see if there was any organizing work that was already being done. And there were some talks. And so we decided to collaborate and create a toolkit called, Slice of Support, to be able to draw attention to the issue of the displacement of those businesses and Filipino livelihood. And then it just blew up. And so we never really launched with that intention, but it just fell into our lap. And I guess it aligned really, really well. And so, yeah.
ISA: Do you have any personal connection to the Joyce Collingwood food hub?
JOCELLE: I think before then it was more of a place that I knew I could always go to. I knew that there were Filipino grocery stores, there Filipino restaurants. And if I ever felt like I wanted Filipino food, or to buy something from the grocery store, I knew I could go there if my mom wasn’t available. But I never had a personal experience growing up there, but a lot of our team members did. And so hearing about their stories about growing up in the neighborhood, and being able to get food. Some of my friends who grew up in the neighborhood and went to St. Mary’s Church that was right beside all those businesses, and how after they would just go and get some Filipino food after, just hearing those stories really conveyed to me the importance of that place. And now since I do work in the neighborhood temporarily, for my summer job, at Collingwood Neighborhood House, I’ve really come to understand with my direct experience about the importance of those food hubs by going there for dinner and grabbing, food, grabbing snacks. Getting Halo-Halo when it’s super hot outside. And yeah, so that is more of my experience throughout the past couple years.
ISA: And can you expand some more on what the Slice of Support toolkit looked like?
JOCELLE: Yeah. When we were first creating the toolkit, we’re thinking about what is the easiest way for us to get our community involved? In my time, in organizing or just in community work, I feel like I haven’t seen a lot of Filipinos get involved. That might just be my experience, it might be a lot. There is some amazing organizing being done regarding the politics of what’s happening in the Philippines. But besides that, I haven’t seen a lot myself. And so as a team, we were thinking about how can we make it really easy for folks to participate? And how can we get the most momentum. And so what we decided to do is create a toolkit with steps. So step one was sharing some information about what was happening in the neighborhood, a really brief summary of what the impacts would be and what that means. And then the second part was creating an email template where people can just insert their name, maybe customize a little bit to their experience or their knowledge, and then providing them the contacts to send their emails and to Vancouver City Council. And then the third option was to share and to tag and to invite other folks in their community to also spread the word and take action as well. And other aspects of it was creating hashtags, such as like #snackofsupport, like getting community members to go visit the community and participate in the direct outreach that was happening there with other members of the community who were talking to people getting their feedback, getting their ideas that they want to share with the developer. And so it ranged from email support, to direct financial support, to directly getting involved and giving their opinion, and so very, like a lot of different avenues for the community and allies to get involved.
ISA: And so what was the extent of the response to the Slice of Support campaign?
JOCELLE: It was crazy. That was most of our first experiences in doing direct community organizing, especially when it comes to like something that important in that bigger scale. And so within the first 24 hours, we had over 1000 shares of our Instagram post. And we were just completely shocked, and people were commenting, and people were messaging us. And then we literally only launched like three months prior. We were at like 200 followers, and then all of a sudden, we were at like 1000 followers, I think it was absolutely crazy. So I think that shows, like, the numbers in terms of how much the Slice of Support campaign reached. But in terms of emails, we were hearing that, like from the city councilors and developer that there was like hundreds of emails being sent, and it really drew a lot of attention. We had some councilors reach out to us, we had news outlets reach out to us. And we also had to try to navigate what it’s like to participate in interviews, whether that be for articles or for the news. And so it was really a crazy 48 hours to just start off. And then after that, we started to do more in person engagements for the community, to realize like, oh, maybe they didn’t know, even though this is happening right in their neighborhood. And then also just connecting with committee members and strategizing. And then we ended up planning the town hall, where folks could listen more about stories and the impact. But it was overall just crazy. And since then, I believe that the developers have had to pull out the proposal and start from scratch. So right now we’re not really sure about if they’re going to come back or what that looks like. But after that campaign, we effectively stopped what they were going to propose to city council in the first place. So I think it was very, very impactful.
ISA: It’s very impressive. And so what do you think you guys did? Right? Or what are some things that you think you guys did, right, that led to this outcome?
JOCELLE: I think the number one thing we did right was reach out to community. I think when we first saw the news, we were sitting at a team meeting, thinking about how crazy this was and how a place that we were so used to having, even though we might have not be currently living in that neighborhood, how it could easily be taken away from us. Because if you go to the Joyce-Collingwood neighborhood and you just exit the skytrain, you see all these huge, like buildings now. You see so much construction. And just to think that those few blocks could also be those big buildings. Now, it just, it doesn’t feel the same. And so when we were sitting down, we were really thinking like, wow, this sucks, like, what are the chances that we can even do anything. And that’s when we’re talking I proposed maybe we can just reach out to see if anyone in the community is doing anything. And it was Renfrew Collingwood Food Justice was going to start doing some in person calls with consultations or community engagements that I was talking about earlier about asking committee members for their feedback and hearing what they think about this development. So when we reached out, we kind of had that point of contact, and realizing that there is work to be done. And then at that point, we fostered a collaboration with them and with other folks in the community who were really passionate. And it really just made everything easier. Reflecting back, like if we were thinking that we couldn’t do anything as individuals or as a small group of people. But then instead of deciding that how about we reach out to community and create collective power. I think that was really where we went right. And why we were able to do something as big, something that blew up, and was all over the news, and that people were talking about. Because I feel like that hasn’t happened a while in a while within the Filipino community. So, yeah, I think that’s definitely one thing that I think was really, really helpful.
ISA: And going through the toolkit, I noticed that there were also translations. So can you walk us through how you guys decided which language to translate into?
JOCELLE: Yes, so translations were very difficult because in grassroots organizing, most of the time, you don’t have any money. So we really had to be creative. We put out a call for people who had experienced translating, or would be interested in translating. And so we decided that since the businesses that we will be concerned about were mainly Filipino, mainly Filipino, and there was one Chinese restaurant there, we decided to translate it to Tagalog, which was just a primary Filipino language, and Chinese. For the approach with Tagalog, we had one of our team members, she asked her mom to ask her co worker, to write out the translation and just read out the toolkit and write out as best as they could. And then after that, we had someone in the community, like, look over and like, make any tweaks as necessary. And then for the Chinese translation, we actually had someone directly message us and be like, Hey, if you’re interested, I can help you do this. And then they got people that they knew would be interested and had experience with that, to do that with them. And so it was just this collaborative Google Doc of people who were simultaneously translating, while the other one is doing it to like talking about what might be the best word for that. So it was really a community effort. And we would have not been able to provide translations if we didn’t have community members, be so generous and so willing to help us out.
ISA: Do you think the social media aspect of the Slice of Support campaign impacted the outcome?
JOCELLE: Absolutely. If we didn’t have social media, we wouldn’t be able to reach like 1000 people with postering in 24 hours. It’s just the power of getting our community to share. And just like a constant chain reaction, it was so so so important. And that email pressure, like getting councilors and the developers to know that we see you like we are not just going to let things happen, I think was really a factor of having that social media support. So definitely.
ISA: What kind of demographics did we see people getting organized around the Joyce Collingwood foodhub?
JOCELLE: I think the great thing about Slice of Support is that we really engaged people of all ages. We had high schoolers interested, we had adults bringing their kids to in person outreach. We had like older folks, our elder folks who were also really involved, like Dr. Leonora Angeles from UBC. And so it was really, very intergenerational from the level of organizing to outreach and just general attendance. And that was my experience, my first time witnessing that. And it was really, really beautiful to see members of all ages come together. And so I think Slice of Support served as one of those. Maybe not first, but one of the first opportunities for the Filipino community, at least maybe in that area to start getting into intergenerational organizing. And I think as time goes by, and maybe we hear back that this developer is back with another proposal, we’ll see it again, and see the momentum and making sure that what we want in our community is represented, represented in what they offer for us. If that happens, though.
ISA: What is the work currently being done at Sliced Mango Collective?
JOCELLE: Yeah, so definitely. After that campaign, we were kind of thrown in a loop of, we were initially an arts collective thrown into community organizing and advocacy. And now what’s next? It’s kind of hard to say because we’re involved with like, tiny little projects or have things in the works. But I think for Sliced Mango, right now we really want to go back to our original intentions, which was to build community through art and culture, especially for Filipino youth. And so we do have a zine on body image which we’ll be releasing this upcoming winter that we have some really amazing contributors participate in. And then we also do hope to host more in person events, as we’re transitioning into more of that instead of virtual, and hopefully some fundraisers. So we’ve really only been launched as an organization for about a year and a half. And it has definitely been a crazy journey. So right now we’re just catching our bearings and focusing on art and culture, and trying to bring that into our events, fundraisers and future issues of our teens.
ISA: Let’s talk about your work at the Peer to Peer summer program at Collingwood Neighbourhood house. So what do you do there?
JOCELLE: Okay, just to preface this, this is a summer job. But it feels like I’ve already been there forever in a good way. So I applied to work with the Peer to Peer program in the summer because I wanted to work with a lot of like Filipino youth. And I know that within that neighborhood, it’s a lot of them. And so within the Peer to Peer program, it’s really focused on health and wellness. And so we offer a variety of summer programming. I can’t really speak to the regular school year programming, because I’ve only been here for a month of it. But we have different programming throughout the week. Some of them are focused on holding space for queer youth, to be able to connect with each other and learn about queer history and identity and have mentors. We also have some programming called Wellness Wednesday, where you are given the opportunity to learn about a variety of topics like mental health, body image and self care. And then we also just in general offer opportunities for the youth to connect with each other over different topics and different activities. And we always do fun stuff like movie nights, game nights, sometimes, we even like cook together. And so my summer has really just been filled with connecting with all these youth which are majority Filipino and just getting a chance to build meaningful relationships. And so my summer has been really awesome. But yeah, that’s basically an overview of what I do.
ISA: Can you speak a little more about the impact of the Peer to Peer summer program on youth in the area?
JOCELLE: Yeah, definitely. So at least a little bit of a precursor. When I was growing up, I always wished I had this programming. I think for me, a big barrier to having like a super fun summer or being able to do things is money. And so when summer camps might be expensive, or they’re far or it’s just not what you’re interested in, it can be really hard to socialize and have a summer where you feel like you have all your needs met, like social needs, like you’re learning and you’re making new friends. And so I really think the impact of this program is providing an opportunity for us to be able to connect with others and be engaged during the summer. Vancouver is such an expensive city. To hang out with your friends, you have to go out to eat, you have to pay for that, you have to tip, like there’s taxes. And not all of these youth have summer jobs. That’s a real barrier. And so just having a space where they can hang out for like four hours, and learn and make new friends is so so impactful. And I think programs like this really need to, like get more funding and be more supported. Because not all of us can like, go to Mexico with their family and have, like, a two week summer vacation or participate in a really prestigious summer camp or whatever. So, like, programs like this, like there is a membership fee for us. But it’s like $10 for the entire year, like programs like that are really, really important for those in the neighborhood who just need an opportunity to connect and explore themselves and just overall grow.
ISA: So, what are some takeaways you’ll have by the end of the summer program?
JOCELLE: The takeaways, I think, is that our future is in great hands. I think these youth are really inspiring and amazing. And then more of, particularly for myself, but a general reflection is that again, we need more of these programs, to be able to provide more opportunities for youth, for them to just be able to grow even more.
ISA: How can Filipino youth get involved in the Vancouver Filipino community?
JOCELLE: Yes, so the main thing I would recommend is following Sliced Mango on Instagram. We do post opportunities there, not only on our feed, but for stories because there are other general Filipino organizations, they might not be youth that also have general ways that they can get involved or just attend events and engagements in terms of specifically the Joyce Collingwood area. Yes, join the Peer to Peer program at Collingwood Neighbourhood house. I think during the school year, they more focus on like professional and personal development within the Peer to Peer programs. I think a lot of Filipino youth can grow their skills there. But we also have… Sliced Mango is a part of the Joyce Street Action Network. And people are more interested about specifically that area and about the cultural food hub. And also about things like affordable housing. I think that’s a great avenue that Filipino youth can get involved. They have an Instagram and so they can follow, and see if there might be any opportunities coming up. They recently had the town hall a couple months ago or last month. And so things like that might come up and then youth can attend those and then chat and get connected.
ISA: You just heard an interview with Jocelle Rofel, Events Coordinator and Campaign Lead at Sliced Mango Collective.
Thank you for listening to this episode which was made possible by the Chan Family Foundation’s generous support. If you have an idea for an episode of the ACAM podcast, we’d love to hear from you. Send us your ideas by emailing us at acam.program@ubc.ca. To be notified when the next podcast episode is released and to stay up to date on all things ACAM, please follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @UBCACAM and like us on Facebook at Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies UBC.
Collingwood Neighbourhood House