The film being shot at the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre looks like a typical indie movie project. Outside, a black Lincoln Town Car sports a camera rigged up to the driver’s side window. Inside the office, cameras and lights surround actors on a makeshift coffee shop set, while a director addresses them.

“You’re a barista. You’ve had a thousand cups of coffee. Talk fast,” the director, Kirk Schwartz, says. “And get close. One thing you have to remember about video is that it really spreads out space.”

The actors take direction, and filming resumes. What makes this different?

The film project is part of the Multicultural Environmental Education Program, or MEEP, which helps new Canadians learn about sustainability and the environment. This time around, eight groups of newcomers are writing, shooting and editing short films for the Recycling Council of B.C.’s Trailer Trashed film festival. To enter, films must try to convince viewers to stop using disposable coffee cups.

The project is a joint venture between the immigrant and refugee society and MediaNet, a local film and video production co-op. MediaNet has donated lights, cameras and other equipment while Kirk Schwartz, the technical director of MediaNet, has donated his time.

“The really important thing to me is that people learn to tell their own stories and have their own voice,” he says. “It’s really exciting. What happens in situations like this is that some people who feel that they’re disenfranchised or not included, when they get the ability to express themselves and have their voice, it’s amazing how their self-confidence goes up and how excited they get about it.”

MEEP has been around for almost two years. Its activities have each involved from 10 to more than 30 participants. Past projects have focused on making non-toxic cleaning products, bicycle maintenance, backyard and container gardening, as well as field trips to places such as Francis King Regional Park and Galiano Island. Participants also recorded green-living tips for radio in Spanish, Punjabi and Mandarin, to spread awareness of things newcomers can do to reduce their environmental impact, keep their family healthy and save money. The tips are broadcast on CFUV 101.9 FM, Village 900 AM, Fairchild Radio and Sher-e-Punjab.

“We saw that there was a gap where the newcomer population wasn’t engaged,” says MEEP co-ordinator Gagan Leekha.

“Newcomers have a lot of barriers when they’re settling — language, housing, trying to get their basic needs met. But we felt that environmental education was an important topic, especially during settlement, when people are getting used to new ways of doing things,” Leekha says.

In many of its projects, MEEP works with other local groups, such as the LifeCycles Project Society, the Compost Education Centre, and compost- and recycling-collection business ReFUSE. After completing each project, participants sign a pledge to set environmental goals for their lives.

Three immigrants — Viet Tran, Hereity Hagdu and Carlos Gaete — started the non-profit immigrant and refugee society in Victoria 21 years ago. The society has grown from the three founding members into a huge organization, packing the third floor at 637 Bay St., and serving more than 3,000 clients a year. With more than 400 volunteers and 30 staff, it offers programs and services such as skills and employment transition help, a free computer lab, and programs to help young immigrants plan for their futures. The centre also offers cultural bridging and host programs.

Gaete, one of the founders, knows how important helping other newcomers is. When he first came to Canada from Chile in 1976, he lived in a hotel in Winnipeg, and thought he’d be stuck there forever. He had no idea how to rent an apartment. Then he met another man from Chile, who helped him get a place to live, the first step, he says, in becoming a part of a community.

“We created this organization because we wanted to provide services to immigrants and refugees from the immigrant perspective, because immigrants understand what other immigrants are going through,” says Gaete, now the executive director of the immigrant and refugee society. “That makes the newcomer feel at home when they come to our organization.”

Among staff at the society, 18 languages are spoken, not to mention countless dialects. The idea for the environmental education program came about three years ago, when Gaete noted the importance of environmental education for newcomers. Thinking that environmental education was a good addition to the society’s existing services, he applied for federal government funding.

‘We receive in Canada, 250,000 newcomers every year. In 10 years, that’s 2.5 million. That’s a lot of people,” Gaete says. “That’s 2.5 million people who don’t receive any environmental education. Most of the newcomers, the great majority, are focused on settling in this new country, and that’s a big deal. So environment, if we don’t make it part of the settlement in this new society, it’s not going to be a priority.”

The federal government rejected the original proposal, but funding was obtained from the Victoria Foundation. With that money the society hired a project co-ordinator to work on the proposal, and eventually funding was obtained from Environment Canada.

Back on the film set, Samantha Rubin and Marianna Galstyan finish a quick planning meeting about their film. Rubin, 41, who immigrated to Canada from the U.S. in 1993, first got involved with immigrant and refugee through a friend who was taking English as a second language classes. Galstyan, 32, arrived from Armenia three years ago.

“Our film is about a fortune teller who reads coffee grounds. She’s reading the grounds of someone who uses a reusable ceramic mug … and then she reads the grounds of a North American who comes in with a disposable cup, and she can’t read him,” Rubin says.

The aim is to highlight differences between the rushed lifestyle of North Americans and the more relaxed pace in other countries. “And we’re telling people, ‘Just slow down. Just sit, enjoy your coffee, and stop trying to rush so much. And your life will be better,’” Rubin says.

Galstyan first got involved with the program when it partnered with LifeCycle’s fruit-picking project.

“Before, I didn’t know much about the environment — the details, how to recycle, this type of thing,” she says. “By participating in projects like this, you learn things. It’s changing my lifestyle, and making me more educated in terms of making the right choices.

“Being an immigrant in Victoria is very hard. There are pre-determined social groups here that are not too open to new things or new people. Being part of [the immigrant and refugee society] was the first thing for me to do. It was how I started creating friendships, and started to fit in,” she says. “I look at this from the point of view of obtaining new skills. In Armenia, you have preset fields that you’re encouraged to go into by your parents — finance, law, medicine — but for a woman to do film or photography … it doesn’t bring you money, so you’re not encouraged to do that. But here, you’re given so much freedom to explore the artistic side of you.”

Rubin agrees that the program is a unique way to explore and understand other cultures.

“When you have projects like this you get exposed to a lot of different ways of being, ideas that people have, ways of navigating through life. I think it’s a wonderful opportunity, because it can shatter presuppositions about other cultures,” Rubin says.

While the education program will end in March, the plan is to integrate environmental education into every program the immigrant and refugee society offers.

“We’re working on another project called ‘Green is For Everyone.’ It is offering diversity training for local environmental groups. It looks at how environmental groups can make their outreach, communications and workplace even more inclusive and welcoming,” Leekha says. “Environmental groups have the resources and skills to engage a wider range of people.”

Read Steve Carey’s blog at timescolonist.com/rethink to find out how to enter the Trailer Trashed film festival, and to hear an interview with Gagan Leekha, MEEP Project Co-ordinator.