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Finding Order in Disorder Foundation

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Key Details

Organisation Name

Finding Order in Disorder Foundation

Location

449 Brownfield Gardens, Toronto, M1C 2Y6.
Canada

Website

Social

eMHIC Member Status

Community Member

At a Glance

Description

Finding Order in Disorder Foundation – a Non-Profit & Arts Collective- named after Ishaa Vinod Chopra’s award-winning memoir – seeks to explore projects such as hybrid podcasts, therapeutic dance and community engagement for mental wellness.

Implementation Status

Early-stage development

Finding Order in Disorder Foundation is an organization and arts collective that extrapolates our founder Ishaa Vinod Chopra’s lived experiences in mental health. It applies it to education, mental health advocacy and multidisciplinary arts to foster empathy, positivity, and self-awareness.

Target Population

Mental Health lived experiences, Queer, Black, Person(s) of Colour - QBPOC

Fostering empathy, positivity, and self-awareness in safe spaces for stigmatized, silenced and suppressed non-dominant narratives.

"The book is a gutsy and brave telling of the author’s experiences in dealing with mental health issues and domestic violence. Ishaa, the daughter of filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra from his marriage to Shabnam Sukhdev, provides a raw and honest account of her struggles, making this memoir a significant contribution to mental health literature."

The Daily Eye

Ishaa’s decision to pen her thoughts and experiences into a book marks a significant milestone in her journey. Chopra, who has always believed in the power of storytelling, recognized that his daughter's writing could potentially help others who are grappling with similar issues. He mentioned how proud he was of Ishaa’s strength and resilience in turning her struggles into something positive.

Health and Me

Finding Order in Disorder combines multinational memoir and mental health outreach with lyrical passages on nature and dance therapy. Chopra’s ultimate aims are to raise awareness about mental health issues, normalize conversations on mental health subjects, and de-stigmatize mental health care.

Wordgathering - A Journal of Disability, Poetry and Literature, Syracuse Univers

The memoir functions as both testimony and resistance. It illuminates how the medicalization of women’s emotions mirrors broader systems of control. The author’s experiences with diagnosis and treatment highlight how psychiatric discourse often reproduces gendered hierarchies: women’s pain is doubted, their intensity subdued, and their instability pathologized rather than understood.

Guelph Resource Centre for Gender Empowerment and Diversity - GRCGED

The event, held at the Guelph Farmers' Market, included drag performances by Kamilla Flores, Kara Melle and Karma Kameleon, a dance workshop by Ishaa Winod Chopra, and the annual Women on the Bridge rally, where participants marched to the Veteran’s Memorial Bridge to raise their voices in support of women’s rights.

Guelph Today- Guelph Farmers Market, Guleph-Wellington Women in Crisis

How did Kathak and other art forms help you? I have been drawn to spirituality, art, dance, and yoga. Someone with my diagnosis needs to have a positive way to channel energies. I was blessed to have Kathak both in and outside rehab. I also uploaded some of my dances on YouTube, where it is hard to notice when I am supposedly ‘unwell’, which is the beauty of art. I used simple yoga asanas to help

New Indian Express

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Interconnected Magazine

Now accepting submissions of interest for the upcoming issue.

Interconnected is the world’s only digital mental health magazine.

Want to be featured?

Email [email protected]

Read the 2025 edition here

Initiative Overview

The Current Gap

The aim is to foster empathy, positivity, and self-awareness while sparking mental health discussions in safe spaces to make space for stigmatized, silenced and supressed narratives of BIPOC, LGBTQIA2S+, and marginalized communities. Being Inclusive is not merely a checkmark for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility as a formality but a core value that our non-profit deeply values.

The use of Therapeutic Dance and Community Arts Engagement for healing and expression by infusing Latin, Indian Classical, and Folk dance will be used as coping mechanism for mental well-being, to foster a sense of community in a safe space for healing, communing, belonging, expression, well-being and engagement.

Authored by the NGO’s founder, where in lucid, simple prose, lived experiences in mental health and being a survivor of domestic abuse are addressed and its impact on interpersonal relationships and societal norms that influence our understanding of and responses to mental health and well-being. Past projects include- ‘Ishaa Journals’ and ‘Unfinished’- a York University MFA documentary project where Ishaa has been a Research Associate and explores her journey in mental health vis-à-vis multidisciplinary arts.

The nonprofit NGO Finding Order in Disorder Foundation is constantly seeking advocates and people with lived experiences to share their stories or connect for a chat if anything interests you! Current projects include Hybrid Podcasts and therapeutic dance projects, and can be accessed at: https://www.youtube.com/@findingorderindisorder.

Please feel free to reach out to us for any consulting, speaking, and collaboration opportunities!

You can reach us at [email protected]

Our Solution

A Non-Profit Arts Collective for nuanced stories to disrupt dominant narratives
Research Projects | Events | Hybrid Podcasts | Conferences | Festivals | Education | Digital Storytelling | Community Arts Engagement | Therapeutic Dance | Mad Studies | Social Justice | Disability Justice

Key Features

1.

Digitial Storytelling

Users receive support from trained clinicians, people with disability related lived experiences and artists.

2.

Digital Dance Workshops

Users receive support through expressive arts therapy to follow dance movement in Indian Classical, Latin and Folk dance.

3.

Hybrid Podcasts

Users receive support from Authors and Professors who have wisdom and knowledge to offer- often, elders are featured, e.g., Dr. Adam W.J Davies.

Collaboration in Action

Main Collaborators

Workman Arts Organization
Stella’s Place
Mad Studies Hub
York University
Mad Pasts
Mad Presence Conference- UVic, B.C

Join Our Global Community

Three ways to get involved:

Choose the level that fits.

become a member

Key Learnings

Initially, it was the challenges of microaggressions in racism, as well as being a South-Asian woman of colour with a mental health disability and being hearing impaired. It was also a challenge initially to gain the validity and reliability of our research projects in order to measure it qualitatively through narrative inquiry, etc. Also- since our organization is a Canadian registered non profit it was a challenge to bring on the global perspective.
The key learnings were that there is great power in global collaborations- although people do not sometimes reside in your own city – you can always digitally speak with them to learn from them and their barriers to accessing a good mental health system and caregiver network so we may apply the same here in Toronto, Canada.

Also presenting at conferences by applying for scholarships to attend has proven to be fruitful.
Our collaborative Insights rely on our 4 major pillars and core values – they are: Collaboration I Creation I Community I Catharsis . Each pillar has played an essential role with our partners, individuals and organizations that we have globally collaborated with such as Billion Strong, Muchmuchmedia and locally with individual mentors such as Nicole Waldron.

Looking Ahead

Our future plans are applying for a physical space – so global fellowships and funding for a physical office and space for creation, collaboration, community and catharsis to unfold through community engaged initiatives.
Opportunities to collaborate for our digital and hybrid podcast and digital storytelling projects – we currently have two such major global projects underway.
A Non-Profit Arts Collective for nuanced stories to disrupt dominant narratives
Research Projects | Events | Hybrid Podcasts | Conferences | Festivals | Education | Digital Storytelling | Community Arts Engagement | Therapeutic Dance | Mad Studies | Social Justice | Disability Justice
IMG_5574.jpeg

Key Contact

Ishaa Vinod Chopra
Founder & Executive Director
Finding Order in Disorder Non Profit & Arts Collective

Email

[email protected]

Website

Media

In Honour of International Sex Works Day - June 2nd- Paid to Exist
World Mental Health Day Special ft. Dr. Adam W.J Davies: Early Childhood Educator's Well-Being

Resources

Digital Finding Order in Disorder Book Cover
Finding_Order_In_Disorder.png.pdf
Self Nomination Form, CV and Bio
CV_Ishaa-Vinod-Chopra_26docx.pdf
eceLINK Article
AECEO_eceLINK_Article_ECE_Voices.pdf
OPIRG- Ontario Public Interest in Research Group- Guelph Performance
Opirg_RK.pdf

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