SAGA and More Than a Roof host workshops to grow a multilingual tree of transition to sustainable development

Meg Holden, David Santiago Moreno Rojas, Aurelia Siles, Kavita John

In July 2026, SAGA researchers and More Than a Roof Housing Society (MTR) partnered to pilot a multilingual community translanguaging workshop. The objective of our joint engagement was to find out: how do community housing residents, across their diverse languages and life experiences, connect with, branch from, and express meanings related to sustainable development?

Within this context, translanguaging, as a skill and a value of thinking and acting across two or more languages, has unrealized potential to carry meaning across and throughout the city, in ways that may help advance progressive transitions. Within cities are vast urban linguistic repertoires, and mobilizing these diverse voices has a lot of unrecognized potential where sustainable urban futures are concerned.

Our starting hypothesis was that the many languages that circulate in our superdiverse city region, usually outside of formal urban policy or planning forums, can mobilize meaningful socioecological transition in an inclusive way. And that the default sense of English as a lingua franca is a big part of what holds this vision back from becoming reality, in multilingual communities.

This collaboration opportunity grew out of an earlier community mapping project that MTR worked on with residents at their newest building, as part of the housewarming celebration. During that event, residents listed the many heart languages spoken across the community. The visually represented community map brought to light the abundance of gifts, perspectives, and passions in the community, creating a foundation from which connections and ideas could naturally flow.

The afternoon workshop events took place inside the two community housing common gathering rooms:  MTR’s two Little Mountain buildings in Vancouver, and Dockside in Steveston (Richmond), which hosted tenants from both Dockside Village and Fiorella. Dockside, in Steveston, is a long-established housing complex focused on housing families with children; while Little Mountain is recently opened, with most residents new within the past year. Although the sites are operated by MTR, they offered a different grouping of residents to engage in the workshop, with a diversity of lived experiences and language repertoires. Based on existing relationships between MTR and residents, warm personal invitations were extended to approximately a dozen households at each site and 21 people attended the workshops in total.

Growing a tree of transition

The centrepiece of our workshops was a “tree of transition”: a physical tree that we constructed from about five feet of surplus wood. We placed the word sustainability at the roots and added nails up the trunk and branches and into the canopy. We invited participants to write or draw a term of transition in a language of their choice, and to tie their term to the tree with yarn.

Our tree of transition leafed up beautifully and differently in each workshop, yielding  21 new terms of transition across 13 languages.

Embodying different languages

The workshops also included a language journey body mapping exercise as a way to warm up participants to the idea of sharing their language diversity. Participants were invited to use colours and symbols on a picture of a human body to represent the languages they carry; and then to present the results to other participants. This exercise was effective in bringing attention to translanguaging to the fore. The patterns, colours and meanings expressed for the body maps were diverse. Some placed English in their head, an indication of the mental work of communication in English, while languages situated in the heart represented deep ties of identity and attachment. Languages placed across participants’ upper bodies, in the chest, arms, and hands often indicated languages used to interact and express themselves with others. Languages placed in the feet were described as those that participants were striving to learn for intended travel in the future.

This translanguaging initiative presented an unexpected and unique opportunity to activate these gifts of language in a way that deepened recognition among residents. The workshop format enabled residents to bring their contributions within an inviting, relational context, sharing of themselves, being received with generous curiosity, and celebrating their diversity. In this way, the workshops tied directly into MTR’s Asset Based Community Development model.

What attracted participants? What concerned them?

The first thing to say about how our events attracted people is that it is surprising they attracted anyone at all! Our purpose appeared ambiguous and unfamiliar: we were not offering language lessons, information or advice. We did not have a budget or any incentives to offer participants. In spite of this, 21 people living on low-moderate income, all but two of whom were immigrants to Canada, chose to spend their summer Friday afternoon with the SAGA Team. Also significantly, although communication in the workshop was predominantly in English, several participants attended although they did not have proficiency in English. These participants muddled through with the help of an AI voice-to-text translator on their phone, in one case, and with the help of their child, in another case.

All participants were uncertain about what would transpire yet all showed up ready to engage. Workshop participants expressed different kinds of motivation: to study, to learn, to share their travels and language backgrounds, to make connections with urban initiatives related to sustainability and green transitions, and to spend time in community.

In the workshops, we noticed that what motivated these newcomers to participate was a desire to connect to the English language and to important trends in Vancouver life, to refer the topic of conversation to their expertise and professional standing in their home country, and to seek social networking connections that might advance their educational or career pathways. Once participants understood from the workshop format and introduction that they were encouraged to use any language that was familiar to them, and to refer freely to knowledge and personal experience from their cultural background, the atmosphere lifted, and the participants spoke louder and with more confidence and optimism.

Behind this happiness to see terms and representations of their cherished languages, participants shared with us their worries about losing these languages as part of adapting and integrating into life in Vancouver. Younger adults had worries about their own capacities to hold onto their languages while at the same time increasing their competencies in English (and a few other languages, French and Spanish in particular) in order to succeed in life. Parents and grandparents expressed a range of worries about their own failures to instill a sense of respect for their language and for multilingualism itself in their children; or, on the contrary, worried that their children would be disadvantaged if they enforced multiple language learning on them, too young. Several parents expressed concerns that either their children preferred to speak English in spite of the care they took to encourage them to use other languages or that their children spoke less than they might otherwise do because they were exposed to multiple languages.

What terms of transition were shared?

Over the course of each workshop, participants took in a presentation and participated in several group activities prior to selecting and crafting their term of transition offering. The majority of terms placed on the tree were profound, heartfelt, and full of meaning. When asked to contribute a term, in any language, that meant sustainability to them, some participants selected terms related to environmental initiatives, such as protecting natural resources. The Spanish term limpio is one example, meaning not only cleanliness in terms of hygiene but also clean living in a more holistic sense.

Other participants selected cultural terms and terms referring to deep-seated and unique cultural artifacts and practices. One of these was the Zulu word ubuntu, understood as "I am because we are," a unique formulation of togetherness and integration of purpose, representing the importance of social interactions and relationships in all meaningful actions.

Sharing some terms, such as terms related to neighbourly help, led to people sharing practices that were common across languages, and commonalities and differences among stories about the origins of these terms and practices. People went beyond the words they offered to share and enact special gestures, such as gestures of respect for elders. A Tagalog word, mano po, was described as a gesture of respect and help, in which a younger person gently takes an elder's hand and touches it to their forehead.

Other participants communicated religious terms and practices, insofar as these related ways to protect and advance human rights through ideas such as peace, home, and community. Al-istikhlāf (الاستخلاف), offered in Arabic, refers to the divine assignment of humanity as stewards and trustees of the Earth, rather than its owners. The participant, originally from Yemen, offered that while the term most frequently used to translate sustainability into Arabic is estidama, al-istikhlāf is better suited, and he taught everyone in the room how to pronounce it. The term, he explained, means something like success, as in succession, with a sense of glory carried into eternity, in the sense of climbing a mountain following the path of one who went before, and leaving enough of a guideway for those who are coming after.

It is significant to note that across our engagements, when participants referred to words that come from their religion, they shared them in secular ways, in keeping with secular Canadian society and the multicultural context. Although the terms may be encountered in religious texts, no participants relied on religious scripture to interpret the terms’ meaning to us; instead, it was sensation, imagery, and applicability that they sought to convey. To these participants, these were the best offerings they had to the spirit and intent of sustainability, as socioecological transition.

The workshops sought to draw out terms of transition and a deeper exploration of their meaning from diverse and non-academic participants, rather than linguists or anthropologists. MTR deeply valued the opportunity to draw out memories and ways of thinking from residents, and record these. The terms shared in the workshops are just a glimpse of the richness of perspective and will for change that could potentially exist in any community.

Engaging through translanguaging

Our foray into engaging in translanguaging in a community housing workshop demonstrated to us the value of the approach and its potential for a sense of pluralism and diversity in the search for belonging, community, and identity in the city –necessary precursors to engaging in progressive transition. We learned to increase our expectations about the wisdom that our participants would offer, because participants offered more than we anticipated.

We recognize that we have much further to go to tend to our tree of transition.^[1] We shared a link to a submission form for our terms of transition multilingual glossary, which is open through the beginning of 2028. We are planning additional means to engage more and with more depth in our community, giving groups more time to seek out and elaborate on the meaning within the terms contributed by our participants, in order to seek richer cultural content to the definitions and more ability to make the linguistic leap across languages to find the magical meaning in between terms.  

Vancouver is a superdiverse city. The SAGA project approaches urban superdiversity in terms of the richness of the language resources that this bestows on the city and our capacity to seek solutions to persistent crises of development. In language terms, as per the 2021 Census, 49% of residents speak a language other than English as a mother tongue. The proportion of residents who speak more than one language (56%) is greater than the proportion who speak only one (44%). Yet the presumption too often is that monolingual English is the norm. Our emphasis on translanguaging for sustainability transition demonstrates that the advantage accorded to monolingual English is not only misplaced in the changing demographics of the city, but represents an opportunity cost for our collective capacity to envision a more sustainable future for our city, together.

^[1] In particular, more attention is needed to include Indigenous people. In the 2021 Census, 25 Indigenous languages were reported as being spoken in Vancouver, with a total of 0.1% of the population able to hold a conversation in one of these languages. Our workshops did introduce two terms that refer to concepts considered by hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wúʔmesh sníchim speakers to be unique and meaningful to socioecological transition, sourced through separate engagements with Indigenous language speakers.

Participant Perspectives

For the participants, this series of workshops represented much more than a research activity—it created a safe, motivating, and deeply inclusive space where non-academic voices could reflect on their hopes for urban sustainability. Above all, residents valued the rare opportunity to speak in their own languages and honour their roots in Canada. Through this process, participants experienced a sense of mutual learning and connection:

"This workshop was very illustrative and helped build awareness about how we view our community and how we want it to become. Even though we are diverse communities, we all share the same desire to see our environment grow in a sustainable and orderly way."

By opening up to one another’s languages and life stories, MTR residents discovered that listening generously to others enriched their personal vision of what it takes to build a sustainable neighbourhood. As another tenant shared:

"We learned among ourselves to be open and listen each other in their own languages. This broadened my personal perspective, enriching what it means to build a sustainable community through spaces where everyone has a voice, respect, and room for differences toward a shared future."

Ultimately, what was most meaningful to MTR participants was feeling seen and heard. This experience demonstrated that when people are given a welcoming, relational setting, grassroots voices can articulate a powerful, collective vision for sustainable cities and communities (UN SDG # 11), grounded in mutual respect and shared belonging.

About More Than a Roof Housing Society (MTR): Community-Driven Sustainability

MTR is a non-profit affordable housing provider operating across 20 housing communities in Metro Vancouver. Serving a resilient and diverse low-to-moderate-income population, including newcomers, established immigrants, families, seniors and singles. MTR brings a holistic community approach to affordable housing, focusing on creating spaces where tenants feel included, respected, and empowered. Grounded in an Asset-Based Community Development model, MTR seeks to draw out and celebrate the natural gifts, languages, and cultural wisdom that residents bring into their living environments.

Through this lens and within the context of sustainable development, it was particularly meaningful for the SAGA project to explore terms of transition like Ubuntu, Al jera, Mano po, and Bayanihan. These concepts suggest that environmentally sustainable living is deeply rooted in how one views oneself in relation to others and the surrounding world. In this endeavour, as with so many complex issues facing our world today, deepening community connections offers a readily available solution that is as powerful as it is overlooked.

Looking Ahead

We see these terms becoming powerful anchors in our community vocabulary, pedal points upon which we can build collective will and energy. Rooting in this foundation, the MTR and SAGA team are exploring ways to extend our joint work across housing communities. We seek to open diverse, flexible avenues for MTR tenants to contribute their linguistic and cultural insights through emerging formats as the project evolves. Together, we aim to explore the multilingual terms of transition in depth, grounding these in our collective vision for sustainable community life.