COVID-19 has created challenges in supporting migrant workers in ways that we couldn’t have imagined months ago. The pandemic has disrupted much of our lives and ways of working- bringing disconnection and fear.

Resisting burnout in this moment means we need to go deeper than the “self-care” we are normally prescribed and look at community collective care and our mental wellness through considering cultural, spiritual, relational and community-based ways to collectively support ourselves and our communities.

How do we support migrant workers who are in precarious work and whose health is at risk? How do we respond to isolation and fear? How do we embrace collective care for ourselves as workers so we can keep the care of migrant workers at the heart of our work? We will look at staying with connection, doing justice and community collective care as acts of resistance and believed-in-hope in this work.

Vikki Reynolds PhD RCC is an activist/therapist from Vancouver, Canada, who works to bridge the worlds of social justice activism and therapy. Vikki is a white settler of Irish, Newfoundland and English folks, and a heterosexual woman with cisgender privilege. Her experience includes supervision and therapy with peers, activists, and other workers responding to the opioid epidemic/poisonings, torture and political violence, sexualized violence, mental health and substance misuse, homelessness and legislated poverty and working alongside gender and sexually diverse communities. Vikki is an Adjunct Professor and has written, keynoted and presented internationally on the subjects of ‘Witnessing Resistance’ to oppression/trauma, ally work, resisting ‘burnout’ with justice-doing, a supervision of solidarity, ethics, and innovative group work. Vikki’s articles and keynotes are available free on her website: www.vikkireynolds.ca