| BARINDER RASODE Barinder Rasode was only nine months old when her family moved to Canada from Ludhiana in Punjab. The family joined her paternal grandfather who had immigrated to Canada in the 1940s. They settled into Kamloops and that is where Barinder graduated high school. She graduated from High School in Kamloops. In India her family was committed to community service where her nana ji, Gani Arjun Singh Litt was an MLA for many years. “The important secret of life which I learnt from my parents at an early age is that the biggest asset that people have is the people around them”, says Barinder. For that reason through out her days in high school, she was very active, from she volunteering at the art gallery, helping out at the local hospital and very active within her school. She married at the age of nineteen. Her husband, Major is a sheriff in the court house and they have three children Kyle 15, Calvin 11 and Ishraj 3. With an extremely supportive husband, and continuous encouragement from her parents and parents in-laws she continued with her education and studied at Simon Fraser University. As her first job, she worked in the office of the Member Parliament from North Surrey, Jim Karpoff. He was the first one to talk about the need for a Canadian Consulate office in Chandigarh. He was also one of the first to bring to the forefront the issue of spousal visas for immigrants. Barinder also gained valuable work experience working for prominent political leader, Penny Priddy. From there, she moved on to become a public servant. “Public service taught me many things, one being, change unfortunately is very slow and it was not where I belonged to”, says Barinder. I moved on with my career to advocacy for workers. At the moment I represent professionals such as lawyers and doctors and advocate for them. It was in the year 1999, her brother in law, Bahadur, who was only 34 years of age passed away due to heart attack, while playing hockey. Unfortunately the second brother-in law Ranbir also died due to heart attack playing ice hockey within a short period of the first tragedy. Ranbir left behind his wife Surjit and three children. This gave a big jolt to the whole family and especially shook lives of young children. When Barinder’s husband, Major, went to tell his nephew Jordy about the tragedy which had struck him and the family, he asked, “Who is now going to coach my soccer team?” That was when the whole family realized the thread of bond which Jordy had with his father and decided to launch Jordy Rasode Soccer Tournament. In the first few years the family focused on spreading awareness about heart and stroke disease and also collected money to donate to the Heart and Stroke Association. But over the last four years Barinder and Major realized that drug and gang culture was becoming a harmful factor affecting the South Asian youth and shifted the of the soccer tournament towards spread of anti-drug and anti-gang awareness. Educational seminars are organized along with the tournament, which bring to light the harms of drugs and gang culture to our society. Above all delicious food and t-shirts are given free of cost. In addition, there are lots of great role models such as Bob Lenarduzzi of the Whitecaps, Penny Priddy, and Wally Oppal who are present in both ‘action’ and in ‘words’ throughout the two day event. One of Barinder’s brothers- in- law’s son, Jared is autistic. He struggles to use language and perceive surroundings in the expected way and so we found that in every community there are children with disabilities who are extremely talented and get ignored. Barinder Rasode has taken upon herself to bring awareness among these families to not to let a child with disabilities such as autism feel left out and ignored in the forthcoming soccer tournament. The tournament will include a skills drill for children with challenges. Another passion of Barinder’s women’s issues and empowering the next generation. She was instrumental in organizing the a forum called ‘Empowering Voices’ this past March. The forums main purpose is to help inspire young women to follow their dreams and discuss the vital importance of finding balance between personal family life and one’s professional life. The forum is organized on the International Day of Women that is on the 8th of March with the Surrey RCMP and Surrey School District. Barinder keeps herself very busy and still hold many volunteer positions: RCMP Diversity Department, Peace Arch Hospital, Surrey Board of Trade, Chair of the Business Excellence Awards, member of the Crime and Justice Committee and of course organizes the Annual Soccer tournament. With ambition goals and a very busy life it is indeed difficult to keep the balance between work and family. But fortunately for Barinder, her parents in law, parents and husband are very supportive of her work. They are the inspiration which drives her to do even better in her work. The message from Barinder Rasode is “stay connected to your Family, to your Sport and to yourself”. She wants to do more and more for the community. She is truly a stateswoman who places herself at the service of the community, rather than placing the community in her service Courtesy: Rishi Singh, Darpan |
