Alumna Ena Chadha places community at the centre of social change
Strength in community: Ena Chadha derives motivation from her desire to generate positive change. Photo: Nabra Badr, Fashion Communication ’18.
Born in New Delhi and raised in Brampton, Ena Chadha remembers her family being extremely community-oriented while she was growing up.
But it was the time she spent at Ryerson pursuing her journalism degree that solidified the path she would eventually take – a human rights lawyer for over 25 years and the current chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (external link) (OHRC).
“Ryerson has always been a community that was much more energetic about issues like social justice, poverty, immigration,” she said. “Those were all issues I was interested in as well.” Her Ryerson journalism training provided her with important investigation and writing skills to advance her human rights work.
Chadha has taken the helm of the OHRC at a crucial time, given its inquiry into Toronto Police Services, a force that has received criticism for years for violent interactions with the city’s Black, Indigenous and racialized communities, and people with mental health concerns. The OHRC recently worked extensively with researchers to examine these incidents of violence.
The goal is to achieve tangible results, Chadha says, something activists and community organizers have been clamoring for over the years. “It’s about proactively enacting change to our current policing models and how policing interacts with other human services,” she said. “Making sure that we fix the gaps in the system that are currently leading to either the underservice or over-policing of certain racialized groups.”
Mitigating the impact of systemic racism
Just before accepting the year-long chief commissioner position, Chadha was appointed by the province’s education minister to serve as a co-reviewer of the Peel District School Board in 2019. The review was tasked with looking at systemic discrimination in the school board, specifically, anti-Black racism.
She thinks that “what people don’t realize is the effect of systemic racism and discrimination, and how damaging and long lasting that effect is in creating many of the crises that we deal with today.”
From concerns about curriculums failing to reflect Canada’s different cultures, to a lack of racialized teachers in the classroom, she worked with her team to identify issues and remedy the inequitable dynamics they create.
When thinking about what motivates her, she comes back to community. Empowering communities to identify their needs and how they can best be served is at the centre of Chadha’s human rights work. “The most fulfilling part of my work as a human rights lawyer is when there’s a positive change for an individual person or when it helps a community.”