Multicultural Health Brokers - Edmonton

Our Stories and our History is our Strength.

The Multicultural Health Brokers Co-operative (MCHB) emerged out of a public health initiative in early nineties to enhance maternal and infant health within immigrant & refugee communities.

The initiative resulted from Public Health department’s recognition that health inequities exists within these communities.  They learned from a research study that families in these communities were not accessing the services that were being provided to the general pubic.  It lead to Public Health recruiting and training a group of women natural leaders from 6 communities to take on an outreach and bridging role between the families and health & social  service providers.

This group of women natural leaders pioneered the cultural brokering practice locally through their maternal infant health outreach work. They also illustrated the value of “community health worker” model .  In 1998, they the MCHB Co-op which was registered as a workers co-operative in 1998 with the provincial government.

As a worker’s Co-operative, MCHB is owned and operated by the workers.  Majority of them are also members or natural leaders within communities which they humbly serve.

Over the two decades, MCHB had received numerous awards in the areas of preventative health, social justice and children services. We have grown in numbers from 14 pioneering members to over 100 of us.

We serve over 2000 families each year within over 25 culturally and linguistically diverse communities in Edmonton.

They include: the Bhutanese, Chinese, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Easter Yugoslavia, Filipino, French speaking African, Karen, Korean, Kurdish, Iraqi, Iranian, Nigerian, Oromo, Romanian, Russian-speaking, South Asian, South Sudanese, Syrian and Vietnamese communities.

Over the years, we have established long standing contractual relationships with Alberta Health Services and Edmonton Region Children’s Services .  In addition, we have successfully received funding from other levels of government and public institutions, many of which in partnership with other highly regarded organizations such as Sage and Multicultural Family Connections.

In April 2020, we became the Hub of the Intercultural Family Resources Network (FRN) for Edmonton Region. We are proud to have as the following organizations as our FRN partners: ASSIST Community Services Centre, BGCBigs (Boys & Girls Club/Big Brothers Big Sisters of Edmonton), Crystal Kids Youth Centre and IFSSA (Islamic Family & Social Services Association).

With the contracts and fundings we receive, we have been able to pursue the following programs that cover all life stages:

1.        Perinatal program: maternal and infant health outreach

2.        Cultural Responsive Home Visitation

3.        Multicultural Family Connections Program

4.        Family Intervention (collaborative model of practice with  Child Intervention)

5.        Multicultural Family Support for Children with Disabilities

6.        Immigrant and Refugee Youth Program

7.        Multicultural Senior Outreach Program (partnership with Sage)

8.        First Step to Integration – Employment Program

9.      Intercultural Competence Training Program

10.      Digital Literacy Project (pilot)

11.      Grocery Run and other food security strategies

Learn more about who we are

Canada offers hope. Possibility. The fulfilling of a dream. Freedom and democracy. But for many new Canadians and ethnic minorities, the obstacles to fulfilling their dreams are overwhelming… Watch our video to learn more.