“If the big ones are not okay, the little ones don’t stand a chance.”
That’s a quote from child psychologist, Jody Carrington, and it was one used at a Jan. 8 press conference by Dokun Nochirionye, the founder of Sudbury community organization, Thriving African Families.
Fondly known as “Mrs Noch,” Nochirionye told attendees “It was that understanding that gave birth to our Village Square program,” which has received $300,000 from the Ontario Trillium Foundation to run the new program for three years.
The organization will be mentored through the three-year-period by Spark Employment Services, which helped them secure the Trillium grant.
Thriving African Families began in the wake of the pandemic, when Nochirionye began hosting online social groups for children in her community, then for their parents. Now, with Thriving African Families, Nochirionye supports families in Sudbury with African heritage, whether they are newcomers to the area or have been here many years.
The organization seeks to provide culturally relevant programs that support “the integration, education, mental health, and community connections of families of African heritage,” she said.
These programs include seniors events, helping with the compounding isolation that comes from being an older adult and a person of colour, said Nochironye, as well as children and youth programming to help kids navigate their new community.
Village Square will specifically be for the caregivers, parents and guardians. There will be parenting workshops, community cooking classes, and trauma-informed healing circles.
Nochirionye said it was in response to the stories she hears of Black parents, guardians and caregivers, raising children and caring for their elders.
Doing "an incredible job" in Northern Ontario, but under often difficult circumstances, she said.
“They're parenting in a multicultural society that expects quick integration and adaptation to Canadian culture, and they still have to carry their migration stress, racial trauma, intergenerational wounds and the loss of their traditional village,” said Nochirionye. “In many cultures, parenting is never done alone. In African culture, this is especially true. But for many Black families here, that village has been stripped away because they've moved.”
She said that what she sees is parents that are busy and isolated. “They're navigating employment pressures, housing challenges, unfamiliar systems, racism and emotional labour, while trying to raise healthy, thriving children. These are not just social challenges. They are social determinants of health. If they are left unsupported, the impact shows up in mental health, family stress, parents, child relationships and long term well being in thriving African families,” she said.
Nochirionye noted it “takes a village to raise a child” and for her, that meant creating a village for herself in 2019, in an entirely different country, while pregnant with her second child.
“I went from being a family of three to being a family of four in a different country, trying to find employment, trying to figure out my life, trying to understand the social system, the bus system, even the weather. It was all very, very different,” she said.
She also began to volunteer and that led to a City of Greater Sudbury Civic Award for her work with the Nigerian Community Association, Children’s Aid Society of Sudbury Manitoulin, and the United Way, with a focus on youth and family.
But it was when the pandemic began to change her child’s life she found her true purpose, she told Sudbury.com in 2024. She began hosting online social groups for children in her community, then for their parents.
Now, two years later, she said that while she “started by seeing a need in the community, a gap that I could fill,” she didn't think it would be this big, “or this quickly,” she said with a laugh.
She said the way the community has reacted to their programs “has given us the momentum to keep going.”
The matriarch of one of the families Nochironye works with, Mary Akumu, also spoke at the event. A mother of two sons, she came to Sudbury from Uganda (with a stop in Toronto) in 2024.
She said she is looking forward to the cooking classes, not just for the community but to know how to navigate Canadian grocery stores. “The rise of the food price in the market is really, really high. But now, I will learn where I can get the cheaper one, and what kind of food I can get to make me glow, like I am right now, and for my children to grow healthy,” she said.
But it’s also about healing, she told attendees.
“As an African person, or as a Black woman, the moment you leave your country and you're right in Canada, you become the hope of your village, the hope of the unborn, even the person who is expecting already knows that. So you wake up every morning with all this,” she said.
But now, she said she smiles because she has the support she needs for her family. “I know that the village is behind me. They're behind me, helping me raise my children to be better men, better husbands, better bosses. Not employees, they will be bosses.”
You can find more information about Thriving African Families at their website here.