Muna DeCiman wins MCOS Betty Szuchewycz Award

Muna has been involved with SACHM as a board member since 2006. Prior to that she was an active member participating in all activities. In 2010 when SACHM celebrated the Centennial of people of African ancestry arriving in Saskatchewan, Muna provided drumming at activities in Melfort, Maidstone, Swift Current, Saskatoon and Regina. Shea has always been a part of organizing committees for any and all events. SACHM had 18 events throughout the province in the Centennial year, including Black History month of 2011. Muna was involved in most of those events. Melfort Rotary invited SACHM to participate in their fundraising evening for East Africa relief of famine Saturday, October 29, 2011 in which five board members participated. Muna organized the fashion show and provided drumming. About 300 people from the community attended.
Muna currently is a member of the Board of Directors, Regina Multicultural Council: Where we work as a team in promoting and encouraging partnership within our cultures, and partners outside the member groups with the hopes of promoting multiculturalism in the community as a whole:

She is a member of the Skin and Bone Drum Group; which promotes multiculturalism in the community through music, workshops and dance;

Muna has worked tirelessly in the African Association of Regina and the Daughters of Africa International Inc. promoting involvement and participation in multicultural programming and activities by associations’ members, families, and the wider community. For example, during multicultural week she worked with several Regina schools: Balfour High School, F.W. Johnson Collegiate High School, Miller High School, and Hawrylak Elementary School to promote multiculturalism through workshops/ cultural displays, fashion shows exhibiting different ethnic clothing, food/ and entertainments—specifically African drumming.

Muna serves as the chair of the Human Rights/ Equity Committee of the Saskatchewan and Government employees union and a member of the Diversity Committee for her employment centre. The HREC works as a team to ensure all members of the diversity groups are represented; the team promotes and encourages staff inclusion of multicultural activities through education.

Muna enjoys and values multiculturalism in the community: she strives to promote and preserve the different cultures in the community by organizing and coordinating cultural activities in schools and in the larger community.

She is an active participant in multicultural activities and festivals in and around Regina where she showcases her exotic cuisine, ethnic clothes, drumming and dancing. As Saskatchewan is becoming more multicultural and multilingual Muna believes it is very important that she and the entire community embrace, support and promote multiculturalism which can be demonstrated through by working and socializing together in harmony to preserve the heritage and traditions as well as grow the cultures of the people who have made Canada, Saskatchewan, Regina their new home. Muna’s life is a living testimony that multiculturalism is important to her and includes peoples of different linguistic groups, religions, faiths and race and members of all ethnocultural communities living together in harmony. She appreciates living in a community where all are encouraged to practice live in their cultures and at the same time all sectors of Saskatchewan’s dynamic multicultural community are valued and live in peaceful cooperation.

Muna has a Master’s Degree in Social Work and she works at the Paul Dojack Youth Centre in Regina as a Facility Youth Worker employs her.