jagged-line-pattern
Family riding bikes

Community's Role in Community Safety

Community of Practice

Next Meeting: July 30, 2025 | 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. ET
 
Topic: Rethinking Community Safety with Serena Nudel
Register Now

Our Community of Practice at a Glance

This Community of Practice (CoP) is facilitated by Tamarack's Communities Building Belonging team, and is intended for practitioners committed to developing their understanding of the role of residents, governments, and institutions in creating community safety through peer-to-peer learning.

Explore with us how building a sense of belonging can address polarization and foster a holistic approach to community safety. We'll delve into challenges and successes in resident engagement and cross-sector collaboration.

 

Rethinking Community Safety Presentation Overview:

Evidence has repeatedly demonstrated that police disproportionally stop, arrest, and search Black and Indigenous people compared to while people. Historically, policy-makers have treated policing as the answer to a wide range of community-safety issues. However, all too often, policing has deepened systemic injustices, caused harm and failed to achieve its stated goal. In a broad range of settings, policing is the wrong tool for improving safety. It often has the opposite effect, and it does so at great expense, despite the availability of better alternatives. This presentation will focus on demonstrating the effectiveness of alternatives to policing, which have demonstrated success in increasing community safety without police intervention. Alternatives that will be highlighted include: Supportive Housing; Game Changers Conflict Resolution and Restorative Justice Program, and City of Toronto, 211 Crisis Response.

Globe

Countries

Practitioners

Practitioners

Meet Your Community of Practice Facilitator

 

Serena Nudel

Serena Nudel is the Director of Community Programs at The Neighbourhood Group Community Services. Her career has focused on leading programs that promote the well-being of populations facing systemic barriers, using an anti-oppressive lens to address the social determinants of health and mental health. With a Master’s of Social Work Degree, a Post-Graduate Degree in Art Therapy and Project Management Professional Certification (PMP), she has been able to apply innovative strategies to ensure equitable and responsive programming as well as high engagement of staff and community. Serena has spearheaded several community-based, peer-led research projects focused on amplifying the needs and barriers faced by youth and newcomers. She has led several successful advocacy campaigns focusing on community-based alternatives to policing, youth violence prevention and youth employment.

 

Savroop ShergillSavroop Shergill

Savroop Shergill (she/they) is the Manager of Communities for the Community Climate Transitions and Communities Building Belonging teams at Tamarack. Sav is committed to decolonial praxis, abolitionism, and third-world and Black feminist principles. She is a registered Social Worker and community organizer. She has worked with survivors of gendered violence, houseless youth, immigrant communities, incarcerated folks, diverse faith communities and S2LGBTQ+ youth and elders. She is passionate about addressing and dismantling the various systemic barriers that marginalized youth and their communities face.

Sav lives and works on Treaty Thirteen Territory, signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties, signed with multiple different Mississaugas and Chippewa bands. This place has been the traditional home and meeting place of Indigenous peoples since time immemorial. Tkaronto, colonially known as Toronto, is on the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabeg, Huron-Wendat, the Chippewa, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. In the Mohawk language, “Tkaronto" means "the place in the water where the trees are standing." She is passionate about addressing and dismantling the various systemic barriers to support climate justice and belonging work across different communities on Turtle Island.

Contact Sav: Savroop@tamarackcommunity.ca

Back to Top

register now

Resource Library

2025

  • Spring CoP Call: April 30, 2025 | 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. ET
  • Summer CoP Call: July 30, 2025 | 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. ET
  • Fall CoP Call: November 5, 2025 | 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. ET

 

2024

  • Elisabeth Miller, Senior Planner at the City of Saskatoon, shared how the City is adopting and applying the principles of Safe Growth and Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) to work alongside residents to improve perceptions of community safety.

  • Latonya Ludford, Canada Project Manager at The Shift shared with us some of the key elements of meaningful engagement — including the difference between consultation and meaningful engagement — highlighted the importance of safety both in and around encampments, and shared examples of communities making efforts towards taking a human rights-based approach to housing.

  • On this call, the CoP got to know each other, develop a sense of the current strengths and challenges of community safety in its local contexts, and discuss what would make this Community of Practice useful this year.

 

2023

2022

Back to Top