Building a shared momentum of care and collaboration, with the Co-Share Collective

Alongside the advent of each Lunar New Year season, we appreciate the opportunity to gather our thoughts on the past year, and to ground ourselves in our intentions for the year ahead. With the incoming Year of the Fire Horse, our annual greeting this year reads, 萬馬奔騰, which translates to “with the momentum of ten thousand galloping horses”. While we look to the horse for ways to honour the care, strength, and joy to be found in our collective power, we offer these reflections on one of the unique ways our team has strived to embody this intention, through our collaborative participation as part of the Co-Share Collective.

From curiosity and creativity, the Co-Share Collective emerges

The Co-Share Collective began in 2023 with the coming together of the following organizations: Hogan’s Alley Society, hua foundation, UBC ACRE, and Chinatown Celebration Society.

Our partnership emerged during a tumultuous time for non-profits. Limited capacity, scarce resources, and funding cuts are common obstacles in the non-profit sector, and this is especially true while navigating a rapidly changing socio-political climate of increasing division, which was — and still continues to be — the case for many organizations.

Facing that kind of pressure can be a “make or break” moment. So, we chose to make our visions of cross-community collaboration a reality, and formed the Co-Share Collective. Initially brought together by a mutual interest in sharing office space between like-minded organizations, our collective has now blossomed into an even fuller relationship built on solidarity, intentional collaboration, and reciprocity.

While cross-organizational partnerships like ours may not be typical, especially not at the depth of commitment that we strive for, it is also more intuitive than it may seem. Our teams and the work we do are all unique, but share many common threads. We are deeply anchored and guided by the needs of the communities we serve. All of our work is also situated in the shared Downtown Eastside, Hogan’s Alley, and Chinatown neighbourhoods, with the wellbeing of our communities often deeply intertwined with each other. Our communities have also long contended with colonial legacies of divide and conquer tactics, utilized by oppressive systems that would only benefit from pitting us against each other.

With all that in mind, our coalition is a bold experiment in wondering: what else is possible when we dare to uplift each other? Built on a shared hope, curiosity, and imagination for what authentic community-building can look like, the Co-Share Collective is a practical invitation to find out, and to actively co-create new possibilities.

Those possibilities can take many shapes. However, they most often begin with the ordinary rhythms of our daily experiences. Ideas for events to bring ourselves and our wider communities together are sparked over casual lunch time chats. New connections emerge and flourish upon the foundations of relationships built with time and trust. Discussing a joint project budget is done with the same care as when we ask each other how our weekends were. Shared moments of joy, learning, support, and success are sprinkled with abundance and ease among the day-to-day questions about where we keep the paperclips, who will be using which desk today, or what kind of snacks we’d like to have in the office.

These everyday practices of care and relationality are an integral part of what deepens our collaborative capacity, and form the building blocks of the places we share and the communities we try to nurture together, whether within our office or the neighbourhoods we work in. They are the continued waypoints into the futures of solidarity and community care we collectively create together.

Finding our rhythms together as a team, in their own words

In celebration of the Co-Share Collective as an embodiment of this Lunar New Year’s sentiment and the gift of shared care and collaboration through collective power, gathered here are some reflections from a few of our Co-Share colleagues, in response to the question: What would you say has been important for enabling the Co-Share Collective to come together the way that it has now?

Udokam Iroegbu, from Hogan’s Alley Society

Regular informal and organic connections have enabled the Co-Share Collective to take shape and for us to dream up programming and initiatives together. Sharing in each other's lives, routines, communities and connections to the city sustains the momentum of our collective efforts.

Kimberley Wong, from hua foundation

Even more than the celebrations, the professional development workshops, and the community events that we host together, it is the magic of the mundane—the act of doing everyday things together as we each navigate our respective community and organizational obstacles—that carries us through the many ups and downs of doing this difficult work. Being in routine and sharing physical space with one another allows us to build empathy, understanding, and friendship in ways that simply cannot be replicated in more formal work environments. 

Shirley Ting, from UBC ACRE

Intentional community building is the foundation for the Co-Share Collective, which requires mindfulness on how our positionalities and actions shape the spaces and relationships we have built together.

Stephanie Leo, from Chinatown Celebration Society

The Co-Share Collective has offered space for Chinatown Celebration Society to reflect on what being in community means. How can we show reciprocity and care for our fellow members when we don’t share physical space daily? How can we show up for community by supporting efforts of healing and mending? Being in this space and time of the Lunar New Year affords us the privilege of reflection and gratitude for the Co-Share Collective and being able to look to the year ahead and ask how Chinatown Celebration Society can continue to show up for community.

As the Co-Share Collective continues to grow into our own team rhythms with each other, we look forward to sharing more of that with you through more reflections, events, and other collaborations into the near future!

1-minute drawings from members of the Co-Share Collective