The mission of Community Campus Engage Canada (CCEC) is to contribute to thriving, just, and
sustainable societies by growing connections, capacity, and infrastructure for community-driven
collaboration with post-secondary institutions across Canada. CCEC emerges from a seven-year
SSHRC-funded pan-Canadian participatory action research project that investigates how community-campus partnerships can be designed and implemented to maximize the value created for non-profit, community-based organizations. Beginning May 1, 2019, CCCE will operate as a project under the Trent Centre for Community-Based Education (TCCBE).

CCEC Steering Committee members will oversee CCEC staff, provide necessary reporting to the
TCCBE’s Board of Directors, and participate on one of three CCEC working groups focused on
Organizational Development, Community of Practice and Network Platform Development, and Funding and Policy.

CCEC seeks Steering Committee members who are committed to realizing CCEC’s Strategic Plan, and who have the capacity to build CCEC collaboratively over the course of a year starting May 1, 2019. We aspire to a diverse Steering Committee inclusive of community, post-secondary and boundary spanning CCE champions, as well as geographic, gender, ethnic, and sectoral/disciplinary diversity. We welcome members with patience for the often ambiguous, messy, and exciting stage of organizational start-up.

Prospective Steering Committee members will be assessed according to the following criteria:

• Knowledge of community-first approaches to community-campus engagement;
• Enthusiasm for the future of CCE in Canada;
• Experience with governance, policy development, evaluation, financial oversight, grant writing, and
  fundraising; and
• Connections to diverse local, regional, provincial/territorial, national, and/or international networks.

It is expected that Steering Committee members will participate for the full Phase I term of CCEC (to May 31, 2020). Members will participate remotely across this pan-Canadian committee. Committee members will typically meet once a month (by video conference), with additional meetings for working groups.

Members can expect to spend approximately a half-day per week in Steering Committee involvement including attending/preparing for meetings, reviewing documents, and contributing to other items related to specific working groups. Interested individuals with limited capacity for participation are invited to describe within their application letter how they may effectively contribute to the committee.

There is no remuneration paid to Steering Committee members, but members will:

• Enjoy access to a vast national-scale CCE network;
• Have a prominent voice in CCEC initiatives for CCE practitioners and stakeholders; and
• Shape the diversity of contributions to significant conversations regarding advancement of CCE efforts in Canada.

Individuals interested in serving as CCEC Steering Committee members are asked to submit a letter (no longer than one page) outlining their interest in CCEC leadership and alignment with the criteria and aspirations detailed above to Lisa Erickson at curtis.sanderson@usask.ca. Review of applications will begin on April 22, 2019. Candidates may be contacted to discuss their interest. Individuals that have been part of the Interim Executive Committee, the Interim Steering Committee, or CFICE, that have convened or participated in CCEC Roundtables, and/or that have a passion for and deep interest in CCE are invited to apply to serve on the CCEC Steering Committee.

Note: Upon applying to this Committee, your application may be shared with current Interim Executive and Steering Committee members as part of the review process.

Please contact Lisa Erickson at lisa.erickson@usask.ca if you have any questions regarding the
nomination process.

This webinar explored how to work in community-campus engagements to shift and support social infrastructure development in Canada.

The guiding questions for this webinar included:

• What kinds of social and green real estate projects are possible?
• How can we structure effective community-campus governance and project-management bodies?
• What combination of financial instruments and sources can be used to finance social infrastructure?

Video Link and Resources

If you missed out on the day-of presentation, not to worry. We’ve made it accessible below.

You can access some additional resources below.

1. Andrew Petter: The new community builders: universities, colleges and institutes are vital source of social infrastructure: 
2. Catalyst for Sustainability: The Achievements, Challenges, Lessons and Prospects of the University of Winnipeg
   Community Renewal Corporation: 
3. Maximizing the Capacities of Advanced Education Institutions to Build Social Infrastructure for Canadian Communities: 

Presenters

Moderator, Edward (Ted) Jackson: Ted Jackson is a university professor, management consultant and author specializing in community-university partnerships, social finance, social enterprise and program evaluation. A former associate dean and tenured faculty member in public policy at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University, he has advised foundations, development agencies, governments, universities and non-profits in all regions of the world.

Andrew Petter,ĚýC.M., Q.C., President of Simon Fraser University: Andrew Petter is President and Vice Chancellor of Simon Fraser University. From 1991 to 2001, he served as a Member of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of British Columbia and held numerous cabinet portfolios, including Advanced Education and Intergovernmental Relations. Since becoming President, he has overseen the implementation of a Strategic Vision that seeks to distinguish SFU as Canada’s “engaged university defined by its dynamic integration of innovative education, cutting edge research, and far-reaching community engagement.” In 2018, he was appointed to the Order of Canada in recognition of his national leadership in advancing university-community engagement and higher education.

Sherman Kreiner, Managing Director of UWCRC and UWCRC 2.0: A community economic development practitioner for nearly 40 years, Sherman Kreiner has served as Managing Director of the University of Winnipeg Community Renewal Corporation since 2005 and of its associated non-profit, UWCRC 2.0, since 2016. He has led the construction of more than $200 million in green, social real estate projects, including a mixed-use, mixed-income residential tower, and the growth of a food-services social enterprise with 100 employees. A former member of the Board of Regents of the University of Winnipeg and a founding director of the University of Winnipeg Foundation, in 2013 he received UW’s 100th Convocation Award for exemplary service to the University.

In this lively podcast, CFICE team members Kristina Reed, Kawsar Mohamed, and Nicole Bedford have a frank conversation about the challenges and rewards of being open to sharing, listening, and working together to make workplaces more accessible to all.

Access a PDF version of the podcast transcript here.

The 2019 Webinar Series will feature three main topics:

January – Growing CCE Student and Community Pathways

This webinar will provide attendees with the opportunity to learn about and share their community-campus assets, gaps, and opportunities for increasing experiential learning, volunteering and research, which involve student placements. You can register for this webinar, which is taking place January 31, 2019 from 12:30pm – 1:30pm EST, here!

February – Increasing CCE Funding and Infrastructure

This webinar will identify national funding and infrastructure trends and opportunities for higher education and will discuss the ways in which attendees can get involved in influencing community-campus engagement policy and practice in Canada.

March – Supporting CCE Indigenous Ethics and Priorities

This webinar will provide an overview of Indigenous Research Ethics and current Indigenous-led research and engagement priorities.

CFICE has been part of creating Community Campus Engage Canada, a movement and new network in Canada focused on community-campus engagement and partnerships for a more just and sustainable Canada. Find out more about CCEC’s 2018 Roundtables and engagement across Canada and stay tuned for our February and March webinar dates. You won’t want to miss them!

Across the contributions, we find a common theme: None of our authors would say they have fully realized the community-first ethos, but striving towards this goal has resulted in personal, social, institutional, and epistemological transformations. Just as the process of throwing, glazing, and firing can transform clay into a beautiful mug like the one featured on the cover of this issue—created by our colleague Cathleen Kneen (1944-2016) —so too does striving to put community first reshape the way we work. This ethos challenges us and it is changing us, but in many ways, the journey to adopt community-first ways of working together has only just begun.

The content in this special issue was created in the context of the Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE, pronounced “suffice”) partnership research project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada beginning in 2012. Over the course of two project phases, CFICE’s overarching goal has been to enhance the partnership policies and practices of community-based organizations, postsecondary institutions, governments and funders to create more effective and valuable community-campus engagement. We define community-campus engagement to include community-engaged research, community service learning, and other ways that postsecondary institutions can have an impact in their communities, such as their potential as anchor institutions for local economies (Dragicevic, 2015).

We hope you enjoy this special issue of Engaged Scholar Journal. For CFICE participants, the transformative journey continues…

Click on the image below to open a PDF copy or .

With the holidays over and a new calendar started, most of us spend January focusing on getting back into a routine. Many of you may have come up with a traditional New Year’s resolution, like eating more veggies or cutting down on waste- and these are great personal goals! However, the purpose of this article will be to challenge you to also set a professional goal: To be more community-first.

Whether you’re a student, a faculty member, a CCE practitioner, or a community partner, we can all challenge ourselves to be more community-first in our work. We are offering you two sets of actions that will help you be more community-first in the new year: ensure an accessible work space, and share resources. Hopefully, you’ll find some practical ideas on how to improve your professional world by making it more community-first.

Action 1: Ensure an accessible work space

In November, our focused on ensuring the inclusion of people with disabilities. Ensuring accessibility is, of course, something that we all need to be doing year-round. However, we challenge you to take a look around your work space, whether it’s an office, a community center, a classroom, etc., and look for barriers for those with disabilities.

These can take the form of architectural barriers like stairs leading to your building without an accompanying ramp, or technological barriers like the absence of a microphone in a large lecture hall.

When looking for areas of improvement, don’t forget about attitudinal barriers that may exist in your work space. Barriers aren’t always as easy as spotting a missing accessible washroom. Sometimes, a proper scan of barriers will lead to the discovery that your job opportunities are not being advertised in accessible spaces (e.g. online, or through a university disability initiative).

Of course, there are countless types of barriers that your workspace can improve on – and when you’ve identified one, either address it yourself, or send it to the proper channels.

Action 2: Share resources

In the New Year, we would also like to challenge you to take inventory of your resources and make sure that they are being adequately shared. If you’re in a position of power, you may not even be aware of the types of resources that you can share with your community partners. We suggest that you pay attention to the ways in which you can share financial resources, knowledge, and space.

If you’re working in an academic setting, you may be familiar with some of the ways to share resources with your community partners (e.g. mobilizing funding by placing research assistants in community organizations, or offering travel bursaries). Talk with your team to look for other avenues to share financial resources, and ask your partners how best to redistribute funds.

As I’m sure you already know, knowledge is one of the most powerful resources in existence. If you’re a community member, you have access to community knowledge. Take a moment to make sure that this knowledge is being shared with everyone at the table. And take the time to ensure that you and your academic partners are working with a shared language that puts you all on the same page. The more voices that are heard, the better!

A third way to make sure you are adequately sharing resources in the new year is to make sure that you are sharing your space. This could mean offering community partners access to meeting rooms, university library collections, or even parking spaces. It could also mean planning meetings at local community centers so meetings are more accessible to everyone.

There are many other ways to ensure that you’re sharing your resources with the goal of being community-first. As always, the first step is awareness, so make sure that you take inventory of the resources at your disposal, be they physical or intellectual, and offer them to your partners.

New Year: New Improvements

We hope that you are inspired to make your workspace more community-first, be it by improving accessibility or sharing more resources. These are only two simple resolutions that you can achieve this year, but feel free to come up with your own! Remember that the New Year is a great opportunity to set new standards of excellence, and being community-first is just about the most excellent thing we can think of.

For more about how to create an accessible workspace, check out our articles: and here.

If you’re looking for more ways to see to it that your resources are being shared, check out our article on the subject from last May.

In this webinar, presenters provided an overview of a self assessment tool, designed specifically for community organizations, that provides information and resources about community-based research with academic partners. Presenters outlined the process of creating the tool, and then gave a live demonstration of how the tool can be used to guide community organizations through the process of working with an academic partner.

Video Link

If you missed out on the day-of presentation, not to worry. We’ve made it accessible below.

Toolkit

You can access the full online version of the tool here!

Presenters

Tara McWhinney is currently enrolled in the PhD program at the School of Social Work at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University. She works as a Research Assistant for the Centre for Studies on Poverty and Social Citizenship and works on research projects with community-based agencies. She has a keen interest and background in critical research methods and social policy analysis.  Working in the community for many years she also has front line experience assisting individuals accessing social assistance programs. With a Masters in geography Tara approaches social justice issues from a unique perspective using online participatory mapping platforms. Her PhD research focuses on how online mapping technologies can be employed in feminist research to explore women’s experiences of social policy.

Adje van de Sande is the academic co-lead of the Tools for Community-First Community Campus Partnerships Working Group. He is an Associate Professor at the School of Social Work at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University. He is the principal author of Statistics for Social Justice: A Structural Approach, published in 2015, and Research for Social Justice: A Community-Based Participatory Approach published by Fernwood in 2017. He is the Chair of the Centre for Studies on Poverty and Social Citizenship, the Research Centre for the School of Social Work. He teaches Research Methods and Statistics at the undergraduate and graduate levels with a focus on community-based participatory research. Over the past 10 years, he has supervised over 60-student led research projects in Eastern Ontario as part of the graduate social work research course. He has presented at numerous national and international conferences on the topic of community-based participatory research. In 2009, he worked on the analysis of the data from the Ontario First Nations Public Health Project. In 2004, he collaborated as a researcher on the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice: The Civil Justice System and the Public, a SSHRC funded research study. He was the principal investigator on the Study of Child and Youth Poverty in Sudbury, funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Institutional Grants.

Zoey Feder is the Administrative Assistant for the (CSPSC). Zoey is a recent graduate from ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´â€™s BSW program. Before joining CSPSC, she was involved with anti-poverty organizations like Canada Without Poverty (CWP) and ACORN Canada. As the Admin Assistant for CSPSC, she assists the Tools for Community-First Community Campus Partnerships Working Group with administrative support.

The last time your community-campus engagement (CCE) project held a meeting, was there a push button on the meeting room door so a participant in a wheelchair could access the room? What about a sign language interpreter, or someone available to take notes for the member with an intellectual disability? After the meeting, did you share your meeting notes in a format easily interpreted by an assisted reading device? Our bet is probably no, and not because your project is inconsiderate, but simply because, in our current culture, thinking about all forms of accessibility isn’t yet a priority. But the Government of Canada has been working to help change this culture and happily, some local institutions are following suit.

Keep reading to find out what is changing and what YOU can do in your CCE work to help.

Canadian Legislation to Increase Opportunity for Persons with Disabilities

Throughout 2016, the Canadian Government, under the leadership of the Minister of Sport and People with Disabilities, consulted Canadians with disabilities in order to better understand the challenges they faced living with a disability in Canada. What they heard loud and clear was that accessible employment was a number one barrier.

As a result, a was tabled in June 2018 with the goal of combating the unemployment rate of Canadians with disabilities (which is disproportionately high compared to Canadians without disabilities). The bill focuses largely on the removal of barriers, which they define as: “Anything physical, architectural, technological or attitudinal, anything that is based on information or communications or anything that is the result of a policy or practice – that hinders the full and equal participation in society of persons with a physical, mental, intellectual, learning, communication or sensory impairment or a functional limitation.”

This bill is an important step forward in helping to change society’s attitudes and approaches toward hiring people with disabilities.

Ottawa’s Post-Secondary Institutions Collaborate to create the David C. Onley Initiative for Employment and Enterprise Development

Inspired by the national legislation, the David C. Onley Initiative for Employment and Enterprise Development is an example of a local initiative that researches and creates pathways to support post-secondary students with disabilities. The initiative is named after David Onley, who was Ontario’s first lieutenant-governor with a disability. During his time as lieutenant-general (2007-2014), he used his position to start the conversation about barriers that Ontarians living with disabilities face.

With a five-million-dollar budget and a two-year timeline, the David C. Onley Initiative hopes to assist students with disabilities find employment after graduation. Similar to our national issue, even students who have graduated from post-secondary institutions in Ottawa are less likely to gain employment following the completion of their studies.

The David C. Onley initiative comes from a partnership between Ottawa’s post-secondary institutions, and includes ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University, University of Ottawa, La CitĂ© CollĂ©giale, and Algonquin College. Each of these institutions has their own department for accessibility. For example, at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University, students with disabilities are welcome at the Paul Menton Centre for Students with Disabilities, which supports students seeking academic accommodation, and offers assistance with learning strategies.

In order to achieve the goal of increasing student employment after graduation, the David C. Onley Initiative is also conducting research to determine why the employment rates for graduated students with disabilities are so low compared to those without disabilities.

Another major goal of the initiative is knowledge mobilization. The initiative has been sharing the results of its work between the institutions involved, and will be working on furthering knowledge mobilization with media articles.

Ultimately, the David C. Onley Initiative seeks to develop strategic partnerships with post-secondary institutions, employment agencies, and employers. These partnerships, like your CCE partnerships, will offer new avenues through which diverse individuals can continue to make meaningful contributions to their communities.

What You Can Do as a CCE Practitioner

Aside from the David C. Onley Initiative, many post-secondary institutions have departments or programs that support knowledge and access for persons with disabilities. For example, ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University has the READ initiative, which stands for: Research, Education, Accessibility, and Design. READ functions both to provide support for researchers seeking to advance accessibility, and for people with disabilities seeking opportunities for employment.

If you are based at a post-secondary institution, make sure that you familiarize yourself with your local accessibility resource centre. If you are based in the community, see if you can access the centres at post-secondary institutions. It is also good to connect with organizations in your community specifically focused on advocating for rights for persons with disabilities.

While the recent national legislation, and local initiatives (like the David. C. Onley Initiative), will hopefully help change the conversation about disability in Canada, you can also contribute by becoming familiar with the barriers that currently exist as part of your CCE work, your organization, and your knowledge mobilization efforts. Like most challenges, the first step is awareness.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of steps that you can take:

• Make sure that you are including discussions about disability in your CCE work and rely on the experts: Ask those with disabilities how best to accommodate their needs.
• If you’re looking to add more people to your team, ensure that research and job opportunities are shared in a variety of ways and in accessible formats. This can include: word of mouth, university or college websites, podcasts or videos, and posters in accessibility centres.
• As you conduct your CCE work, make sure that your meeting spaces are accessible. You may be losing important research participants because of a physical barrier blocking your space. If possible in your area, plan your meetings at a space that is close to accessible transit too.
• When you are sharing your research, you can ensure that your findings are accessible to everyone. There are plenty of alternative formats for sharing your findings in order to make it accessible to a broader audience. Try providing an electronic transcript online that can be read on different devices, as well as offering an audio version. For an internationally recognized technology, try converting your findings into the .

As a nation, we have a long way to go when it comes to ensuring access to all parts of society for everyone, but the new legislation on accessibility is a positive step towards this goal. On a local scale, initiatives like the David C. Onley Initiative in Ottawa are also helping to change our culture by pointing research in the right direction. But it is up to us as individuals, and especially as CCE practitioners, to make sure we change the conversation when it comes to accessibility.

You have the power to make a difference, and sometimes the first step is as simple as acknowledging a problem so you can start to find some more inclusive solutions!

In this webinar, presenters shared some of their experiences and strategies for bringing community voices more fully into the post-secondary sphere.

The webinar touched on:

• How Abbey Gardens has advocated for community voices at Trent University
• How, as a faculty member, Peter has advocated for community voices at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University
• How the Harris Centre at Memorial University works to connect the Newfoundland and Labrador communities with the people and resources at Memorial University

Video Link

If you missed out on the day-of presentation, not to worry. We’ve made it accessible below.

You can also access the presenters’ PowerPoint presentations:

A community organization’s perspective advocating for community voices

A professor’s perspective advocating for community voices

An engagement centre’s perspective advocating for community voices

Presenters

Heather Reid works as the Operations Director of Abbey Gardens, a not-for profit charity providing economic and recreational opportunities for Haliburton County. Heather has a background in Recreation Management, Outdoor Education, Small Business, and Community-Based Research. She gained experience brokering projects between the university and community in Nova Scotia at Acadia University. Upon moving to Haliburton, she was the program coordinator and then director at the U-Links Centre for Community Based Research. In 2013 Heather took on the role of Operations Director at Abbey Gardens and continues to foster relationships with the university through her current position.

Peter Andrée is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science. His research focuses on international and Canadian environmental politics, the political economy of agri-food systems, and community-based responses to the challenges of food security and agricultural sustainability. He is co-editor of “Globalization and Food Sovereignty: Global and Local Change in the New Politics of Food,” to be published by University of Toronto Press in March 2014. He is also author of “Genetically Modified Diplomacy,” on the global politics of regulating genetically-modified crops and foods, published by University of British Columbia Press.

Amy Jones is the knowledge mobilization coordinator with the Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Amy helps make research, teaching and public engagement at Memorial relevant to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador through creating connections and facilitating effective partnerships. Amy delivers the Thriving Regions Partnership Process, which engages communities and provides funding and supports to faculty, staff and students to build meaningful research partnerships for thriving social and economic regions.

Moderator: Dr. Michelle Nilson is an associate professor with the Faculty of Education at SFU, where she teaches in the Educational Leadership programs. Her research and scholarship is inspired by questions concerning the nexus between postsecondary institutions, their environment, and the social, physical, and political. Her current work is a critical examination of student financial aid and teacher education policies and their implications for access, equity, and postsecondary student participation. Her research draws on her previous experience as an administrator of several large National Science Foundation and Ford Foundation grants that fostered opportunities for building networks and communication between various stakeholder groups. Her early days were spent in Detroit, Michigan, where she taught high school mathematics and middle school science.

Since its inception in 2001, Food Secure Canada (FSC) has been a strong voice for food security and sovereignty advancements in Canada. Through partnerships with projects like Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE), FSC has brought their advocacy game to new heights.

In contrast with other community-based organizations that often lack capacity to conduct independent research, FSC has capitalized on partnering with organizations rooted in both academia and the community to conduct and produce unique, targeted research. The organization’s community-campus engagement (CCE) work has led to many pivotal wins including grants to conduct research on and . This recognition of FSC as a research-capable organization exhibits an important shift in Canadian culture towards valuing local research expertise and its contribution towards informing all levels of government during policy development.

So, who is FSC and what do they do?

(FSC) is a national network of organizations and individuals working together to bring food and farming issues to the forefront of Canadian policy. Throughout its existence, FSC has championed dialogue domestically and internationally regarding its three main goals: zero hunger, healthy and safe food, and sustainable food systems for all.

As a multi-faceted organization, FSC expedites conversation and action for a more equitable and community-driven food movement. Key components of FSC’s foci of action include: increasing access to food research and knowledge, supporting the development of food research and food-related projects, advocating for food policies at the federal level, and most notably, ensuring all Canadians are given a platform to engage with what a national food policy would do for the millions it intends to serve.

What is FSC’s relationship with CFICE?

In 2012, FSC partnered with CFICE to create the — a network of academics, non-profits and community organizers dedicated to strengthening partnerships between community and academic sectors. The Collaborative helps to increase the quantity and quality of sharp, progressive research that directly impacts the evolution of a more equitable and just food system.

Amanda Wilson, Assistant Professor at Saint Paul University

Amanda Wilson, Assistant Professor in the School of Social Innovation at Saint Paul University and former Post-Doctoral research fellow at FSC, says this collaborative effort between stakeholders isn’t a new phenomenon within food system work in Canada. “There has always been a close and collective relationship between academia and community work, both of which are supportive of each other within the food movement and between agri-food scholars,” Wilson says. While community-campus collaborations have been part of food security work for a while, the Collaborative represents a formal network dedicated to sharing knowledge. Within this knowledge base, FSC and Collaborative members can facilitate relationships between community and campus researchers and collaboratively create and mobilize food research for more informed policy.

Through the Collaborative, FSC has effectively bridged the relationship between front line service work and research faculties. This merger provides various food organizations with a wealth of knowledge, undoubtedly contributing to their advocacy and program facilitation across the country. In addition, the research produced is indispensable since it is driven and informed by community needs and expertise.

Attendees at the Ottawa Food Summit. ©Food Secure Canada

How does the Collaborative, and FSC’s relationship with CFICE, strengthen their advocacy work?

FSC’s partnership with CFICE through the Community Academic Collaborative, has supported FSC in claiming their rightful seat at the table when working with government officials. By bolstering its policy recommendations with comprehensive evidence-based reports, FSC is creating a Canada to be proud of in regards to accessing safe and nutritious food for all.

According to Wilson, FSC’s work has a direct impact on communities across the country: “The partnerships between the community and academic institutions builds a more collective and effective community. It gives [FSC] the chance to engage in research that we wouldn’t normally call research, like town halls or focus groups. We then use this research to create greater engagement for policy change, facilitate conferences and build the complex web of relationships and projects that hopefully moves towards building a better food system for everyone.”

Undeniably, the Collaborative has led to big wins for FSC and the rest of the food community in Canada.

For example, the Collaborative has given FSC the support it needs to continue to fight for a National Food Policy for Canada. This work is important; Despite Canada’s commitments to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,ĚýFSC estimates that at least .

The capacity FSC has gained through the Collaborative has given them the ability to produce policy reports, conduct presentations and events, host conferences, and organize to present their research to those who can create change in Canada. FSC’s collaborative CCE efforts were recently rewarded as the release of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-food’s report,Ěý, thoroughly encompassed several of FSC’s key recommendations including recognizing food as a human right, and the importance of implementing a Food Policy Advisory Body.

FSC’s efforts have even led to recognition by international food organizations also working on national food policy initiatives, as well as another government research contract further increasing its recognition and legitimacy as a leader in food policy work.

Food Secure Canada presents with CFICE as part of a panel on Food Policy Council models at the Common Food Policy Conference in Brussels.

The need for capacity to create opportunity

Community-based organizations like FSC evolving to become leaders in advocacy and research is a feat worthy of recognition. As Wilson notes, many organizations face a continuous struggle to nurture their advocacy and research work in the absence of support from strong community-campus partnerships. “In some ways it’s like a chicken and the egg debate. You need a strong baseline of capacity that allows you to go out and look for contracts and grants to begin with. Once you have that base, you are able to tackle the core concepts of our work, which is making sure the community is in the driver’s seat.”

Through FSC’s ability to capitalize on the support gained through community-campus partnerships like the one with CFICE, FSC has been able to produce research that brings to the table the importance of vibrant food systems. The impact they have had as a result spans from improved access to food in the North, increased environmental stewardship and more widespread sustainable production and harvesting practices, to improved health and safety, and more innovative food initiatives and governance.

As we patiently wait for a Canada with zero hunger, our job has to be supporting organizations and partnerships that fight for a safer, more equitable country for all.