Community Collaboration Networks connect people with lived experience and organizational allies, providing channels for participatory consultation in policy design, program planning, research, knowledge translation communications, and intersectoral initiatives. They facilitate networking and relationship building, offering a framework for meaningful diversity, equity, and inclusion, cohesive community power building, and collaborative work.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Black feminist scholars in the USA explored the limitations and problems focusing on only one factor when considering the experiences of people. One of these scholars was Kimberlé Crenshaw. She wrote about the experiences of Black women. Black women experience the world in a different way than Black men or white women. This is because Black women face discrimination based on their gender and their race. Crenshaw coined the term "intersectionality." Intersectionality refers to how sources of discrimination overlap and reinforce each other. It also refers to the reality that we all have many identities that intersect to make us who we are [Read more here].

We recognize identity is deeply intersectional and neither individuals nor communities can be distinctly categorized by who they are, or what they share. To categorize identity is inherently to reduce a person or community to a single aspect of what it is. The following sections have therefore been included not to define or compartamentalize discrete community identities, but to represent intersectional layers that can be shared and domains through which communities may connect. Their purpose here is to create space in conversation and consideration, and to support individuals and organizations finding each other through a variety of possible connections.