Asè, we are Iyé Creative
Iyé Creative is a food justice and grassroots collective nurturing reciprocal relations and mutual aid systems. Our intention is to hold space for healing, enjoyment, and abundance, as means of breaking through the path of human suffering.
Through our intersectional approach, we centre our work on the restoration of ancestral narratives, practices, and ways of being within communities that have been historically oppressed and are located on unceded and occupied Coast Salish Territory.
The plurality is made up of complex ecologies of what is considered the Coast Salish Territory since the beginning of time. Our ongoing commitment to uplift indigenous voices is supported by honouring, continually expanding, and building understandings of Indigenous rights and history in order to fulfill our responsibilities as settlers, who pray, live, and engage diverse, ever-changing communities on the unceded territory of the W̱SÁNEĆ and the Lək̓ʷəŋən speaking peoples-the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations.
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MISSION
To ensure the participation, contributions, and support of racialized and marginalized people are valued in the region’s food systems, strategies, and services
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VISION
To generate communal abundance, by embodying global indigenous ways of knowing, as tools of liberation for a more equitable and just society.
Ariel is a community connector, Afrofuturistic, systematic thinker, Iyé Creative co-founder, and entrepreneur born in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. Ariel for the past 10 years have been involved in coordinating at the highest level, optimizing, and managing various community, and international collaboration projects and grassroot initiatives that favour long-term, reciprocal and respectful relationship building for communities in Cuba and what’s currently Canada.
Jess is the Iyé Creative co-founder, foodie, and entrepreneur born in BC, Canada. For the past 7 years Jess has been involved in the execution of various anthropological and archaeological research-based projects that favour long term and respectful relationship building with First Nation communities. As a community builder, she loves connecting with knowledge keepers in order to create alternatives based on global ancestral practices to solve local, and modern unbalances. During her spare time she enjoys crafting using traditional practices.
Ariel & Jess
Co-Founders
Anna Maria Stone
Program Coordinator
Mohanned Ghadban
Videographer
As a reverential visitor on these lands of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples, and through connecting with her Celtic and Greek ancestry, Anna Maria is working towards collective remembering of how to be in right relationship with the land and all its human and non-human elements, while dismantling systems of oppression.
Her lived experience with chronic illness has expanded her awareness of holistic healing and the barriers within our current paradigms around health and well-being. With a background in permaculture and whole systems thinking, and as a life-long student and teacher, Anna Maria feels the immeasurable value in reconnecting human culture with the natural world.
Mohanned has been engaging within Iyé from the beginning. Graduated from SAE Institute Jordan - Creative Media Education.
Moe is inspired by details and lights in order to tell stories by showing the ideas on screen and capture the moments to translate what is seen through his lens.
He's currently married with two angel kids.
Razan Mereeb
Knowledge Mobilization Assistant
Nancy Nyandika
Researcher,
Community Based Research
Razan is Lebanese-born, and is a visitor on the unceded ancestral lands of the Lək̓ʷəŋən Peoples. She is a passionate artist, digital designer & illustrator. As a Muslim Arab Woman, Razan has always been dedicated to empower IBPOC women and individuals through her craft. She is an alumna of the University of Victoria's Bachelors of Visual Arts Program, where her pieces authentically reflected her identity, and were, and will always be, dedicated to uplifting minorities, especially Muslim WOC. Razan is honored to serve diverse audiences through her work with Iyé Creative, where her design work contributes to food justice and inclusivity.
Nancy was born in Kenya, East Africa. She is a visitor on the unceded ancestral lands of the Lək̓ʷəŋən People. She is passionate about sustainable development rooted in community (and individual) participation as communities (and people) always know what they need and what works best for them.
Her work and life experiences have taught her that we are all connected, to each other, and to our environment. She is learning what it means to be a global citizen in a multi-cultural world.
Nancy is an alumna of Royal Roads University’s Master of Arts in Intercultural & International Communication program.