At CFICE, we feel good about being part of community success stories–but how can we measure if we’ve truly made an impact? This is the question that Emily Amon, a master’s student at Trent University, is tackling with her research on the U-links model and its environmental, social, cultural and economic impacts. In case you haven’t heard, U-Links is a community organization that “links” faculty and students from Trent University with local Haliburton County community groups to work together on research and development projects.

We got a chance to interview Emily at the Canadian Community Campus Engagement Roundtable (CCCER) that took place at �Ӱ�ԭ�� University on February 14th, 2018. At the meeting, members of CFICE, community groups and academic institutions met to network and share ideas. Among the many topics we discussed was the importance of measuring community impact and the outcomes of community-campus engagement.

Emily is a U-Links student research veteran. During her undergraduate studies at Trent she was a student researcher on several projects. She says that she was motivated to work with U-Links again, this time to look at community impact, because of her belief in direct social action: “I think it is common to community-based practitioners that they may not see themselves as a researcher but more as an agent of change.”

Techniques for measuring community impact must be based in the community. To this end, Emily will be embedding herself in the Haliburton community and conducting a range of research activities there. She will spend the summer following up on past U-Links projects and interviewing the project hosts, as well as capturing some community perspectives on U-Links via online surveys. From these community sources and from a participatory action workshop with U-Links, she hopes to create a picture of the tangible outputs of the projects, focusing on “how they attribute changes to the processes and products of the U-Links relationship.” Emily says, “You can’t necessarily state causation in many cases but you are able to state what they feel has changed as a result of the research.”

Emily foresees that the data she collects might provide some best practices for engaging in community-based research. When looking at projects that have been successful, she says that she aims to “identify the building blocks of a particularly impactful project. So perhaps there will be themes that come across as we look at successful projects.” She also hopes that identifying these success factors can help to encourage more community work and justify increased funding for new projects.

Knowing more about best practices may also go a long way in helping to facilitate good community-campus relationships. Emily points out that, “Often times, there is a lot of mistrust because the academic institutions sometimes come into communities to, what can feel like, meet their own ends rather than use a truly collaborative process. People may be concerned about whether or not the research will be useful to them, or whether they will be an active participant. So looking at how to better have these relationships can help to really solidify that this is an explicitly community-first approach.”

Look for more blog posts about this project in the future. In the meantime, you can check out U-Links at their website: .

Have you evaluated the community impact of your community-based projects? Please feel free to share your insights in the comments below!

Are you an avid researcher hoping to showcase your work? Are you involved with a community project? Are you looking for a way to ensure that you get credit for your research? ORCID can help!

What is ORCID?

ORCID is a service that is growing in popularity within the research community. ORCID stands for Open Researcher and Contributor ID and is an alphanumeric identifier that uniquely connects authors and contributors to their research, scholarship, and innovation.

ORCID itself is a not-for-profit organization that aims to eliminate the name ambiguity faced by many researchers and contributors. By supplying everyone with a unique ID, ORCID allows you to get credit for your work without having to worry about the other researcher also named Jane or John Doe.

ORCID creates a comprehensive profile for you and your research efforts. It collects biographical details, your educational background, employment background, funding information, and a database of your works.

How ORCID can help you?

Signing up for ORCID is as easy as entering your name, email, and password; but why should you start this process? ORCID has many benefits to you as a researcher, as well as to the way your research is shared on a global scale.

First and foremost, the ORCID identifier will last the lifetime of your research career and beyond. These unique identifiers are used to maintain a transparent and trustworthy connection between you the researcher, your contributions, and academic projects you may participate in. It is used in conjunction with your name to enforce your tie to your work.

Additionally, the ORCID infrastructure brings the researchers together by helping to maintain connections. Have you ever had to switch institutions or community organizations? Chances are you may have lost your work email, making staying in touch with your colleagues that much harder. ORCID, if you allow it, can share your most up to date email with your network making staying in touch a breeze.

Furthermore, ORCID is becoming integrated into the world of research through journals, grant applications, and institutions. Already, over 3,000 journals have begun to require the use of the ORCID identifier, and some American funders have already integrated ORCID into their grant applications. And this is a good thing for busy researchers. The information ORCID holds will help save you time. Rather than filling out countless forms, simply attach your ORCID identifier when registering for journal submissions, funding applications, and institutional identification and ORCID will share your past research efforts with one swift move.

And ORCID is not just for academics…

ORCID provides a platform to store your research, scholarship, and innovation; however, this is not limited to university-affiliated academics. ORCID helps all individuals archive and track their projects. Community members across all fields, especially those working in community-campus engagement (CCE), could benefit just as much from having a platform to document their efforts. ORCID’s approach creates an environment that encourages information and research findings to be shared not only across borders, but also across fields. From a CCE perspective, ORCID is especially beneficial as it helps to further connect community partners with academics.

Why should you embrace ORCID?

Overall, ORCID is an innovative concept that aims to provide a platform to connect research internationally. Research involves the “the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions”. ORCID increases the pool of investigable materials by allowing research to reliably be shared across disciplines, borders, and time. With over 4,000,000 registrants to date, ORCID is growing into a necessary tool for any researcher hoping to further their research initiatives and share their findings.

If you are interested in creating an ORCID identifier, check out their website:

Abigail Moriah has been a member of CFICE’s Steering Committee since 2015 and was appointed as the committee’s Community Co-chair��at the end of 2016.

Moriah was introduced to CFICE while attending a forum in Brazil where she connected with fellow CFICE members. The forum aligned with Moriah’s interests in teaching academic institutions how to support the work of community building and non-profit organizations: “Personally, I value the engagement between academic institutions and the research of a collaborative community. It exposes me to the ways that post-secondary institutions implement policy and improve practice with non-profit organizations and the community.”

Moriah has actively volunteered throughout her life in the public, non-profit, and community-based sectors. Her expertise in urban and community planning has enabled her to better put��research into practice for CFICE.

Her role on the CFICE Steering Committee has been to help oversee the project and provide strategies and guidance for the overall operation. She believes that research plays a critical role in improving practice, regardless of the sector. As a practitioner herself, Moriah sees CFICE as a venue where she can ask her burning questions about community-campus engagement work, like, “Why can’t it be shaped differently?” “Are there ways to have different priorities?” “Do we dedicate more resources or broaden the scope?” The answers to these questions have ultimately helped her understand the implications of community-based research. “It highlights both the benefits and the challenges of institutions and their ability to shape the scope of projects.”

Recently, Moriah and the Academic Co-Chair of the Steering Committee, Karen Schwartz, created and administered a survey for the Steering Committee to better understand and engage members with the project. “I am hoping that this recent development will strengthen the steering committee’s engagement with its role and ensure success for the project.”

Moriah’s visions for CFICE’s future include the opportunity to shape the conversation around community-campus partnerships and how they benefit the community. She states that CFICE is, “Well positioned to provide evidence and practical guidance to how this work is done in Canada.” Moriah acknowledges the gaps in society and wishes to create and develop an inclusive community. She essentially sees the potential in projects like CFICE and collaborations between academic institutions and the community to address and resolve such societal gaps through theory and practice.

“I hope to be able to contribute better to practices that strengthen the involvement of the minorities and racialized communities in community planning. There is still lots of room for improvement in terms of urban planning and community planning to include and involve populations that are traditionally not involved in conversations that shape cities and communities.”

At Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE), we recognize the need to be intersectional in our work and research in order to address injustices in all forms. CFICE works to optimize the impact of campus community engagement by working on , , and .

Kim Pate is CFICE’s Community Co-Lead for the Violence Against Women Hub and a member of the Program Committee.

My understanding of Intersectionality is that it’s a framework that recognizes the multiple inequities that marginalized people face. These injustices are interconnected, and to eradicate them, we need to focus on all of them simultaneously. To understand more about intersectionality, I interviewed Order of Canada Recipient Kim Pate, the executive director of the and the community co-lead for CFICE’s Violence Against Women hub.

To Kim, intersectionality, with respect to violence against women work, means working with women’s groups, anti-poverty groups, and anti-racism groups. Social justice work requires a lot of intersectionality as, for example, food security relates to poverty and environmental sustainability work. In northern communities and indigenous communities, you often see poverty strongly linked to the ability of people to have sufficient and safe food and water. Kim says these communities are living in conditions that are considered lower than developing countries by UN standards. This is mostly related to the environmental injustices they face.

With regards to environmental justice, Kim says, “Environmental, food, and women issues are issues that are very much linked to the land, particularly for First Nations communities.” Kim also notes that sustainable development nowadays is more likely to include substantive financial and economic justice for women.

In community work, it’s often encouraged to work in silos in order to be more focused on issues, but Kim says that can be counterproductive as you end up with siloed departments, that are working in the same areas but are really isolated from one another. People don’t think about their personal security, income and food security one day at a time. It’s all interconnected because they simultaneously face these realities everyday. Kim says that the fact that CFICE tries to make linkages across violence against women, environmental sustainability, food security, and poverty is really important because they are interlinked.

In terms of successful examples of Intersectionality, Kim cites the late Cathleen Kneen as an example of someone who was very involved across different movements and was intersectional in her approach. Cathleen was involved in the food security anti-poverty and women’s movements. Kim says women’s collectives have done a great job being Intersectional. They set up everything in their communities, from community co-operative kitchens to gardens and childcare facilities. There are, however, a few of those examples now.

One of the barriers of working in groups, Kim says, is a lack of resources. Intersectionality requires resources which are hard to come by in an age of austerity due to several government cuts and defunding.

To activists and people who want to make a difference, Kim says, expect and challenge all levels of government working towards greater national food security, poverty reduction, environmental sustainability, and eliminating violence against women . They can work together by modelling, promoting, and supporting those who are already working to together.

Resources to learn more about Intersectionality:

The together with organized a National Summit on Collaborative Community-Campus Research. This event was held on November 3 and 4, 2014 in Waterloo, Ontario and brought together over 60 leaders of community-based research from academia and community. Summit objectives included:

• Sharing examples of CBR
• Building consensus on indicators of CBR excellence
• Discussing the establishment of Hubs of Excellence across Canada, each addressing topics of societal change
• Mobilizing National Summit learnings

To find out more about what happened at the Summit, check out the��, , , and .
More information is��also available about the and the .

CES4Health publishes diverse products of community-based participatory research and other forms of community-engaged scholarship – including��videos, policy briefs, resource guides and online toolkits.�� Basically, any product in English from anywhere in the world,��except��journal manuscripts!

CES4Health has published 60 products��to date��—��all products of community-engaged scholarship — and many co-authored by community and academic partners.

Community-based organizations are also finding CES4Health��to be a valuable outlet for peer-reviewed publication of their community-engaged work, whether involving academic partnerships or not.

CES4Health��provides wide dissemination of ��high quality products that can improve the health of communities��and��“count” in the faculty promotion and tenure process.�� Every product submitted is peer reviewed��by community and academic experts. ��If it’s published, the Editor sends an email about the publication and the rigorous peer review process to people that authors identify, such as deans, department chairs and supervisors.

CES4Health��also tracks how many times a product is downloaded��and can follow-up with users to find out how it was used��– important data that can be��included in promotion and tenure dossiers and grant proposals.�� I should also mention that CES4Health does not retain copyright for any of the products it publishes.

�վ�����������to submit products, search for products and apply to be��a reviewer.�� Follow the latest CES4Health news on twitter at

One of the remarkable outcomes of the work of the Service aux collectivites at the University of Quebec at Montreal�� is Regime de Retraite, a pension plan for employees of community and women’s organizations in Quebec.�� With some 3,000 members and a healthy investment fund, the plan provides the economic security of good pension benefits to support the retirement of workers in the non-profit and social sector. Interestingly, Michel Lizee, the animator of the initiative and now one of its board members, is a graduate of �Ӱ�ԭ��’s Institute for Political Economy.�� ��He is willing to speak about this model with interested non-profits in English-speaking Canada.�� For more information, see .