Timeline
October 2023 – Present
Families in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side (DTES) experience significant health inequities driven by factors such as colonialism, racism, poverty, substance use stigma, and other challenges. Community-based organizations are crucial in addressing these disparities, providing much-needed support to marginalized families in the neighbourhood.
Launched in October 2023, the Braiding Wisdoms Community Project is a three-year research and design collaboration with the Social Pediatrics Program at BC Children’s Hospital, and two local non-profit organizations–RayCam Cooperative Centre and Raincity Housing–aimed at improving family health and well-being through community collaboration. Rooted in Indigenous knowledge and cultural practices, this project aims to address systemic health inequities in Vancouver’s inner-city neighbourhoods through strengthening partnerships among community organizations in the DTES, with the ultimate goal of keeping families together.
Braiding Wisdoms builds on a two-year community engagement initiative hosted by Raincity Housing that brought together five peer advocacy groups supported by an Advisory Council of six Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers. Monthly circles with these peer groups and community organizations helped identify many challenges of the system, one being a lack of effective cooperation across organizations to drive systemic change. Braiding Wisdoms aims to address this challenge and build a more collaborative approach to improving family health in the DTES.
In the September 2025, the peer advocacy groups were relaunched and named K’emk’emeláy K’xwu7lh Advocacy circles, bringing together peer advocates with shared identities (mothers, young mothers, youth, fathers/uncles, grandparents, and Two-Spirit folks) to support one another in a cultural, harm-reduction-based approach. The Braiding Wisdoms Community Project works in tandem with the K’emk’emeláy K’xwu7lh Advocacy Circles to foster relationships and build collective action to support family wellbeing.
Both projects are overseen by a shared Elder Advisory, consisting of seven Elders and Knowledge Keepers from both the Host Nations of xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and other communities across Turtle Island.
Phase 1: Outreach
The project began with 16 interviews conducted with 20 community organizations that support family wellbeing in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The HDL helped to gather insights into their mandates, day-to-day activities, and barriers in supporting families, while also exploring tools and mechanisms for fostering effective intersectoral collaboration.
Their insights informed the design of a half-day workshop co-led with Elders from the Advisory Council in December 2024. The HDL team helped to facilitate co-design activities rooted in Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Canoe teachings that helped to envision what form collaboration might take. The workshop provided an opportunity to explore the barriers to collaboration, identify mechanisms and roles necessary for effective intersectoral partnerships. These conversations revealed a shared and recurring theme among all community partners: the need to re-establish regular community gathering as a mechanism for enhancing collaboration, knowledge exchange, and collective advocacy.
Phase 2: Co-Designing Ways of Working Together
Throughout 2025, the HDL continued to co-facilitate inter-organizational collaboration and community building with the Braiding Wisdoms community including regular virtual gatherings and seasonal in-person gatherings. Given that relationships and relational accountability are at the core of many Indigenous research methodologies, a primary focus of the gatherings was to build relationships between organizations HDL supported this work through engagement activities at the gatherings.
The River Map demonstrates a mechanism that was adopted in late 2024 to center non-colonial approaches for planning and collaboration. Inspired by the teachings of Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers and visualized by the HDL team, represents the past, current and future journeys taken by the Braiding Wisdoms canoe crew. It is an example of a living participatory design tool.
Phase 3: Ongoing Collaboration to Support Family Wellbeing
When the K’emk’emeláy K’xwu7lh Advocacy circles relaunched in September 2025, the Braiding Wisdoms community was well poised to support their work through the mechanisms for collaboration they codesigned together.
Braiding Wisdoms continues to gather in different capacities to respond to acute and ongoing health-equity needs raised by community members, including peers in the advocacy circles.
Throughout this three-year project, the Health Design Lab team has supported knowledge sharing and mobilization through the development of visual materials that support communication between organizations, with peers and with funding agencies.
In 2026, the Health Design Lab developed a visual language and set of logos to support the knowledge mobilization and identify of Braiding Wisdoms and K’emk’emeláy K’xwu7lh Advocacy circles. This involved collaborative design work with the Elder Advisory Committee including artist and Elder, Dr. Latash. This visual identify was then extended to public-facing communications, including reports and the design of a project website.
