This book includes chapters from each of the hub’s partners, and outlines the different models of engagement used by each partnership to complete work towards reducing poverty in their respective communities.

To view and/or download a PDF copy of the book, click on the image below. Happy reading!

This article was first posted by Aimee Coueslan on and is being shared with her permission on the CFICE website.

In their core strategic planning, universities across Canada are now identifying community engagement as a core function of research, teaching, and learning. Universities are also recognizing the power of engagement to enhance learning and research. In terms of learning, community engagement can provide students with a new sense of purpose for their education, as well as a sense of belonging that can transform young lives and support student mental health. Community engagement also allows different types of learners to thrive, while enhancing competencies and confidence. In the case of community-engaged research, benefits include increased research impact, greater opportunities to translate findings into practice, expanded funding opportunities, and increased capacity of both researchers and community groups. Community-engaged research provides an opportunity to positively effect change in one’s own community through the development of research questions that are responsive to community needs.

Community-First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE), a seven-year SSHRC-funded action research project based at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ University, has officially launched a national network and community of practice called Community-Campus Engage Canada (CCEC). To celebrate the launch on June 20, 2018, CFICE convened a panel to discuss how to provide long-term support to the community-campus engagement (CCE) movement and ensure that it maximizes value for all partners. The discussion began with the perspective that community-campus engagement must be community-driven; it must put the priorities of the community first and allow the community to decide how it wants to contribute and how it would like to benefit. The panelists addressed what being community-driven means in practice, and their answer had four parts: establishing participatory, horizontal relationships; developing a shared vision; addressing issues of equity and inclusivity; and the democratic communication of research findings.

Relationships

Catherine Graham of the prioritized the establishment of relationships as a necessary first step. Researchers need to communicate directly with community members, approaching them with the perspective of “What can I do for you?” There are four interrelated concepts integral to the establishment of these relationships: shared power, cultural safety, knowledge democracy, and long-term reciprocity.

1.ÌęSharing Power: At its heart, sharing power means humbling oneself and allowing the community to be the teacher and the academic to be the student. The researcher must know when to step back and follow the community’s lead. Power is not necessarily shared 50/50.

2.ÌęCultural Safety: involves creating a safe respectful welcoming environment with no denial of who people are and what they need. In this environment, people are supported to draw strengths from their identity, culture, and community. Creating this environment requires cultural humility, listening without judgment, and being open to learning from and about others.

3.ÌęKnowledge Democracy: The concept of knowledge democracy is part of a larger discourse on the decolonization of higher education which has disrupted academia’s monopoly on knowledge creation.  of the University of Victoria detailed the principles of knowledge democracy: recognizing multiple epistemologies, including indigenous ways of knowing and being; recognizing multiple ways of representing knowledge, beyond text and statistics, to include arts-based forms of knowledge mobilization; recognizing participatory knowledge as critical to social transformation; and prioritizing open-access publishing and dissemination.

4.ÌęLong-term Reciprocity: When establishing relationships, researchers must be mindful that they need to be in it for the long-term. Parachuting into a community and then appearing to disappear sows mistrust.

A Shared Vision

Once established, these community-campus relationships are deepened as partners align around a shared vision. It is important that all parties agree upon the opportunity or issue to be resolved, a shared understanding of that issue, and an agreed-upon approach for addressing it. A shared framework and strategy creates a sense of common purpose, builds trust amongst participants, and provides coherence to diverse activities. Liz Weaver, co-CEO of the , pointed out that it is only by unlocking our collaborative potential that we can solve the increasingly complex problems that communities face today.

The Tamarack Institute has a  for developing a collective vision for change.

Equity and Inclusivity

Academics and community groups are on an unequal footing in terms of funding and access to technology and other resources. In the interest of fairness, researchers must strive to be transparent about these inequities and power differentials, and, where possible, address them. In their mid-term report, CFICE provides the example that post-secondary institutions should move funds for community-based projects in a timely manner to ensure fair treatment of community partners.

Similarly, those involved in community-campus engagement need to be mindful of reducing barriers — attitudinal, geographical, physical, social, and economic — to participation. CCE must be inclusive, reaching out to marginalized and informal communities and bringing together the rural and the urban, east and west, north and south.

Democratic Communication

Isabelle Kim, director of the University of Toronto’s , spoke about making research findings accessible in terms of both who gets to communicate them and who gets access to them. If community-engaged research results are only communicated via academic language, community partners will be excluded. Story-telling is a vital tool for democratic discourse: all project participants can engage with the results or collaborate in the story-telling itself. The key is to avoid superficial boosterism or university public relations and remain attuned to the complexities of the story and its interpretations.

Community-campus engagement is of growing importance at university campuses around the world. It is also at the heart of what the  at Brandon University does. For all researchers involved in rural issues, developing the capacities to serve in this boundary-spanning CCE role is key. Rural researchers must learn to embrace complexity, conflict, and uncertainty enroute to the realization of shared solutions.

The panel discussion at the heart of this blog post, entitled “Co-Creating the Future of Community-Campus Engagement in Canada,” is available on the CFICEÌę·É±đČúČőŸ±łÙ±đ.

SSRHC provides one-year  for community-campus partnerships that will inform decision-making and serve the needs of one partner outside of the academic sector.

Being ‘community first’ means engaging and involving community partners at all stages of the partnership, even the application process. When the CFICE team was putting together its SSHRC application several years ago, the application process presented one of the first opportunities to put the ‘community first’ ethos into action.

With so many partners involved in CFICE, (at least a dozen universities and 60+ community-based organizations), finding a project design, structure, and common goals across the project posed a challenge, but over the course of the six years of this project, CFICE leaders have learned to put community first through practice.

CFICE spoke to its current Principal Investigator, Peter Andrée, and one of the community partners from the Poverty Reduction Hub, Liz Weaver of Tamarack Institute in Waterloo, to gain their insight into how best to formulate a SSHRC partnership grant application while respectfully involving your community-based organization (CBO) partners.

Sharing ideas at the Ottawa CCE Regional Roundtable.

Start with existing relationships

Before you can think about submitting a SSHRC partnership grant application, you need to know who your partners will be. In CFICE’s case, most community partnerships arose out of pre-existing relationships and networks. CFICE’s original Principal Investigator (PI) Ted Jackson approached the Tamarack Institute, for instance, because he already had a relationship with them from his work in the community development sector.

CFICE Principal Investigator, Peter Andree.

Peter AndrĂ©e, the current PI for CFICE, was originally involved in the project as the academic co-lead for the Community Food Security hub. Through his academic research on food security, AndrĂ©e had an established network of contacts in that field, and it was through this network that he recruited to be a part of CFICE. AndrĂ©e said in an interview that connecting with partners in the early stages of the project “was a bit of an organic process” involving the lead academics and the Canadian Alliance for Community Service Learning (CACSL) drawing on their networks.

While you might begin with relationships you’ve already built, that does not mean that those you first approach will necessarily be the right fit. “The question then becomes how much you can ask of [the community partner],” AndrĂ©e says. “It’s often about your networks, but then don’t take that relationship for granted…really try and figure out if this is going to be of value [for them] or not.”

Community partners are often asked to write letters of support in the context of a partnership grant application, but AndrĂ©e says this isn’t something you want to ask them for right away. “Rather, you first have to have a conversation about what would be in this for you, and what would be in this for me, and how can we make sure that your time is valued and how can this be reciprocal?” he says.

Those initial conversations, of which there might be several, are the key to hashing out things like the responsibilities involved in the project and the potential benefits for each partner. If it’s a SSHRC partnership grant you’re applying for, don’t forget that the project is a research project at the end of the day.

“While it can serve other ends for community organizations, it ultimately needs to be this knowledge generation, synthesis project, so if that is not of interest to them, then you have to have those conversations early on” in order to determine if the partnership will be a good fit, says AndrĂ©e.

Consult partners from the get-go

Liz Weaver, the Co-CEO of the community-based organization the , was a community co-lead in CFICE’s Poverty Reduction hub in Phase I of the project. She says CFICE helped the folks at the Tamarack Institute feel respected and included in the application process by involving them in the initial design of the project.

“I think what was really important was the whole notion of community-first,” Weaver told CFICE in a recent interview. For CFICE, “community-first” means fostering equitable partnerships to co-create knowledge that can then be applied to benefit the community context.

“I felt I was informed at every stage of how the process was moving forward
there were lots of emails back and forth with community partners about where the proposal was at,” Weaver said. Then, when the CFICE project got to the interview stage of the SSHRC proposal, community partners were invited to be a part of that process as well.

As a community partner outside of the academic sphere, Weaver said the SSHRC application itself can be a bit “daunting,” but that “the people at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ [University] were quite helpful in terms of navigating [that].”

Exchanging as much information as possible and providing assistance with the application process when needed can make your CBO feel included and involved without feeling overwhelmed.

Align shared goals

As part of those early conversations, ensuring that partners are on the same page as to the broader goals of the project, and what they hope to get out of the project for their individual organization or research, is an important step in ensuring that expectations are aligned.

“Some of what’s implicit in how we work needs to be made explicit, so that everybody understands the parameters that everybody’s working with,” says AndrĂ©e. For instance, if an academic partner is looking to get tenure in the next five years, “that’s got to be on the table,” AndrĂ©e says. “What do you need to get tenure? If that’s a certain number of publications, how does that fit in with what you’re planning to do with your community partners?” Expectations that might seem like they are outside of the partnership, but that could influence one’s involvement in the project, need to be acknowledged.

Weaver said “the group has to buy into the shared agenda” of the research project, and thought maybe that was something that was lacking within CFICE’s Phase I. “I think we circled around the shared agenda a lot, and then each of the hubs did their own thing,” she said.

Both Weaver and Andrée identified the need to be in partnership with an organization as a whole, rather than just one person within that organization.

“Chances are people who are still doing the work five years later are not the people who started, and so there needs to be an institutional commitment to the value of the work for that organization,” AndrĂ©e says.

And, if you do have organizational or institutional support, and you have aligned goals and expectations, Weaver adds that something else to consider is your partners’ state of readiness. “If you want [the project] to get off the ground quickly, then you want to have groups that have good relationships and people who make decisions relatively quickly,” she said.

Negotiate power and governance

Over the course of CFICE, face-to-face meetings have been found to be integral to the success of partnership projects. These meetings allow honest and frank discussions to take place and can be helpful to address more difficult topics such as power imbalances. Weaver says the first face-to-face meeting for all CFICE partners did not happen until after the funding was secured and the logistics and structure of the project was already in place. She suggests that in hindsight, this might have been done differently, so that the main ‘hub’ structure of the CFICE project could have been better communicated to community partners.

While Weaver said community partners might have been more involved in deciding the overall project structure, when it came to the individual hubs, “we were able—both community and academic—to make decisions fairly quickly with the design of that project.” Weaver said the independence that was afforded to the hubs, in her case the Poverty Reduction hub, was helpful to the community partners and allowed them to have a driving voice behind the work.

Identifying areas where community partners will take the lead in terms of decision making and governance, and outlining areas that fall into the academic purview is important to ensure power dynamics are addressed and relationships are as equitable as possible.

For instance, within the SSHRC partnership grant, the PI, an academic, is ultimately responsible for budgeting and management of funds. That means that they will hold a certain degree of power and governance in the project. It is important to acknowledge this role and how it may impact the partnership in the context of these early conversations.

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

Presenters:

PossĂ©dant une maĂźtrise en droit international, JosĂ©e-Anne Riverin agit Ă  titre d’agente de dĂ©veloppement au domaine communautaire du Service aux collectivitĂ©s depuis 2011. S’intĂ©ressant particuliĂšrement aux enjeux de promotion et de dĂ©fense des droits humains ainsi qu’aux problĂ©matiques relatives aux peuples et femmes autochtones, JosĂ©e-Anne a cumulĂ© plusieurs expĂ©riences liĂ©es aux luttes des femmes autochtones au QuĂ©bec mais Ă©galement dans les AmĂ©riques ainsi qu’en Asie. Elle accompagne aujourd’hui diffĂ©rents projets partenariaux de recherche, de formation et de diffusion touchant ces enjeux ainsi que ceux relatifs Ă  la participation citoyenne, Ă  la lutte Ă  l’exclusion, etc. | Masters in International Law graduate JosĂ©e-Anne Riverin has been employed as a community development officer within Community Services since 2011. She is especially interested in the challenges of both promoting and defending human rights in addition to those affecting First Nations peoples and Aboriginal women in particular. JosĂ©e-Anne’s career includes numerous experiences associated with the struggles of Aboriginal women in Quebec, Asia and the Americas. She is currently involved in several research, training and outreach partnership projects that address these issues as well as those related to citizen participation, to social exclusion, etc.

Jill Wyatt is a former educator and high school principal, CEO of the YWCA of Calgary and VP, Community Investments and Collaborations with United Way of Calgary and Area. She has served two terms as a senator of the University of Calgary. She is currently serving as the Chair of the Board of Governors of the University of Calgary. Jill’s passion for community building has been a driving force in changing social conditions and creating opportunities for individuals, families and communities. She is a proven leader during times of complex change, working to innovate for greater impact, and helping people develop to reach their potential. | Jill Wyatt est ancienne Ă©ducatrice et directrice d’école secondaire en plus d’avoir siĂ©gĂ© en tant que PDG du YWCA de Calgary et vice-directrice du projet de Collaboration et engagement communautaire de la rĂ©gion de Calgary, un programme menĂ© par United Way. Jill, qui est motivĂ©e par sa passion pour le renforcement communautaire, a pour objectif d’aborder les conditions sociales changeantes et de crĂ©er des occasions pour non seulement les individus, mais aussi les familles et les communautĂ©s en entier. GrĂące Ă  ses compĂ©tences et expĂ©riences professionnelles en gestion, Jill a su faire preuve de qualitĂ©s de leadership pendant les pĂ©riodes difficiles Ă  changements imprĂ©visibles. À ces moments, elle n’a jamais perdu de vue son but ultime d’aider les individus Ă  rĂ©aliser pleinement leur potentiel et d’intĂ©grer d’importantes innovations ayant des impacts Ă  grande Ă©chelle.

Liz Weaver is the Co-CEO of Tamarack Institute where she is leading the Tamarack Learning Centre. The Tamarack Learning Centre has a focus on advancing community change efforts and does this by focusing on five strategic areas including collective impact, collaborative leadership, community engagement, community innovation and evaluating community impact. Liz is well-known for her thought leadership on collective impact and is the author of several popular and academic papers on the topic. She is a co-catalyst partner with the Collective Impact Forum and leads a collective impact capacity building strategy with the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Liz is passionate about the power and potential of communities getting to impact on complex issues. Prior to her current role at Tamarack, Liz led the Vibrant Communities Canada team and assisted place-based collaborative tables develop their frameworks of change, and supported and guided their projects from idea to impact. From 2006 – 2009, Liz was the Director for the Hamilton Roundtable on Poverty Reduction, which was recognized with the Canadian Urban Institute’s David Crombie Leadership Award. In her career, Liz has held leadership positions with YWCA Hamilton, Volunteer Hamilton and Volunteer Canada. In 2002, Liz completed a Masters of Management, McGill University. Liz received Queen’s Jubilee Medals in 2002 and 2012 for her contributions to volunteerism in Canada and in 2004 was awarded the Women in the Workplace award from the City of Hamilton. | Liz Weaver occupe actuellement la poste de co-PDG Ă  l’Institut Tamarack oĂč elle dirige le Centre d’apprentissage de Tamarack. Le Centre d’apprentissage de Tamarack se donne pour objectif l’intĂ©gration des innovations avantageuses dans les communautĂ©s. Pour ce faire, l’administration s’appuie sur cinq principes stratĂ©giques: l’impact collectif, le leadership en collaboration, l’engagement communautaire, l’innovation communautaire et l’évaluation de l’impact sur les communautĂ©s. Liz est connue pour ses idĂ©es concernant le leadership et l’impact collectif et a rĂ©digĂ© plusieurs dissertations scolaires de renommĂ©e Ă  ce sujet. Liz s’implique aussi en tant que partenaire au sein du Forum sur l’impact collectif. En plus, elle dirige le projet portant sur les stratĂ©gies d’amĂ©lioration des compĂ©tences en impact collectif au sein de la Fondation Trillium de l’Ontario. Liz s’intĂ©resse Ă  la capacitĂ© qu’Ă©prouvent les membres de diffĂ©rentes communautĂ©s d’influer les problĂ©matiques complexes. Avant d’ĂȘtre engagĂ©e au sein de l’Institut Tamarack, Liz a dirigĂ© l’équipe de communautĂ©s vibrantes du Canada. En outre, elle a donnĂ© un coup de main aux panels de collaboration adaptĂ©s au milieu Ă  Ă©laborer leurs cadres de changement, et elle a incarnĂ© le rĂŽle de guide et d’appui du dĂ©but Ă  la fin de la rĂ©alisation de leur projet. De 2006 Ă  2009, Liz Ă©tait directrice de la Table ronde de Hamilton pour la rĂ©duction de la pauvretĂ©: le Prix de leadership David Crombie lui a Ă©tĂ© confĂ©rĂ© par l’Institut urbain canadien. Pendant sa carriĂšre, Liz a occupĂ© des postes de direction au sein du YWCA de Hamilton, de BĂ©nĂ©voles Hamilton et de BĂ©nĂ©voles Canada. En 2002, Liz dĂ©tient une MaĂźtrise en gestion de l’UniversitĂ© de McGill. En 2002 et en 2012, Liz s’est mĂ©ritĂ© la MĂ©daille du jubilĂ© d’or pour ses contributions Ă  l’engagement communautaire au Canada, et en 2004 elle a obtenu le Prix des femmes en milieu de travail de la Ville de Hamilton.

Chad Lubelsky works at the McConnell Foundation where he is the program lead for public interest journalism and RECODE – a pan-Canadian initiative to provide Social Innovation tools and opportunities for College and Universities to become drivers of progress and community change. Prior to joining the Foundation, Chad was the Executive Director of Santropol Roulant; developed leadership and community engagement programs for the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation; worked as an Assignment Editor for NBC news in San Francisco; managed global Internet Rights advocacy for the South African based Association for Progressive Communications; and was a Founding Trustee of the Montreal Awesome Foundation. Chad holds a BA in Communications & Master Degrees in Communications and Leadership. | Chad Lubelsky travaille au sein de la Fondation McConnell oĂč il est directeur de programmation pour le journalisme d’intĂ©rĂȘt public et pour RECODE. RECODE est une initiative pancanadienne qui cherche Ă  approvisionner les collĂšges et les universitĂ©s en matiĂšre d’outils et d’occasions en innovation sociale afin que ces deux acteurs puissent solliciter de vrais changements et avancements dans la communautĂ©. Avant, Chad Ă©tait chef de la direction au sein de Santropol Roulant. De plus, il a crĂ©Ă© des projets d’engagement communautaire et de leadership au sein de la Fondation canadienne des bourses d’études du millĂ©naire. À San Francisco, il Ă©tait Ă©diteur de projets pour le rĂ©seau de tĂ©lĂ©vision NBC. Au sein de l’Association pour la communication progressive stationnĂ©e en Afrique du Sud, Chad a gĂ©rĂ© le mouvement de revendication pour l’accĂšs Ă  internet comme droit de la personne. Finalement, il Ă©tait administrateur au moment de la mise sur pied de la Fondation formidable MontrĂ©al. Chad  dĂ©tient un baccalaurĂ©at Ăšs arts en communication, une MaĂźtrise en communication et une deuxiĂšme MaĂźtrise en leadership.

Crystal Tremblay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Special Advisor on Community Engaged Scholarship at the University of Victoria. She is a social geographer and community-based scholar activist with over a decade of international experience supporting resource co-governance and livelihood enhancement. She specializes in using participatory video and arts-based methods for community engagement, capacity building and program evaluation working across sectors with higher education institutions, government, and civil society organizations. She is passionate about cultivating new spaces for creative citizen engagement and the co-creation of knowledge leading to environmental and social equity. Crystal has done extensive research and projects on CCE funding, impact and policy in Canada and is eager to support building a long-term movement and infrastructure for lasting change, which benefits communities and incentivizes academia. For more information, please visit her website: . | Crystal Tremblay est professeure adjointe du dĂ©partement de gĂ©ographie et conseillĂšre spĂ©cialisĂ©e en engagement communautaire de l’UniversitĂ© de Victoria. Elle est gĂ©ographe sociale et militante Ă©rudite adaptĂ©e aux milieux communautaires. Elle dĂ©tient plus d’une dĂ©cennie d’expĂ©rience internationale en soutien de la gestion collaborative des ressources et en amĂ©lioration des moyens de subsistance. Elle se spĂ©cialise dans l’emploi de l’enregistrement vidĂ©o participatif, dans l’évaluation des programmes et dans le dĂ©veloppement des compĂ©tences Ă  travers les organisations issues de la vie civile et des secteurs gouvernementaux et d’études postsecondaires. Elle s’appuie sur des mĂ©thodes inspirĂ©es des sciences humaines pour promouvoir l’engagement communautaire. Elle est passionnĂ©e par les initiatives d’amĂ©nagement de nouveaux espaces qui sont dĂ©vouĂ©s aux projets d’engagement communautaire dynamique et par la dĂ©couverte collaborative des connaissances qui abordent l’amĂ©lioration de l’équitĂ© environnementale et sociale. Crystal a effectuĂ© des Ă©tudes approfondies sur le financement, l’impact et la politique du CCE au Canada. Elle dĂ©sire s’engager pleinement dans la construction de l’infrastructure Ă  changement durable et dans le dĂ©veloppement d’un mouvement Ă  long terme qui bĂ©nĂ©ficient aux communautĂ©s et qui encouragent la recherche acadĂ©mique. Pour de plus amples renseignements, veuillez consulter sa page web:

Isabelle Kim is the director of the Centre for Community Partnerships at the University of Toronto. She also teaches graduate courses in the department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning. Isabelle is passionate about the possibilities for learning and social change when connecting students, faculty and community partners. She is glad to be part of the CCEC working group which can play a role in fostering cultures of community-engaged learning and research across Canadian colleges and universities. | Isabelle Kim est directrice du Centre pour partenariats communautaires Ă  l’UniversitĂ© de Toronto. Elle donne aussi des cours d’études supĂ©rieures appartenant au DĂ©partement du curriculum, de l’enseignement et de l’apprentissage. Isabelle s’intĂ©resse aux opportunitĂ©s d’apprentissage et de changement social qui existent lorsque l’on Ă©tablit des liens avec des Ă©tudiants, des membres facultaires et des partenaires communautaires. Elle est fiĂšre de faire partie de l’équipe de travail du CCEC. Cette Ă©quipe joue un rĂŽle en promotion de la culture et de la recherche en apprentissage par engagement communautaire Ă  travers les institutions d’études postsecondaires au Canada.

Catherine Graham, is currently working with the National Association of Friendship Centres (NAFC) as Director of Research and Policy. She has worked with Aboriginal organizations at the national and provincial, community levels for more than 15 years on issues related to organizational development, the social determinants of health including social inclusion, and health equity. Most notably she served for four years as Director of the MĂ©tis Centre of the National Aboriginal Health Organization. Her research interests include Indigenous research methodologies and ethics, the social determinants of health, culturally relevant gender- based analysis, mental wellness, Indigenous identity, and Indigenous governance and policy. Catherine holds a Master of Arts in Legal Studies from ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ University and she hopes to return to ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ to continue her PhD work in Anthropology where her research will utilize a settler colonial lens to examine the ways in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers navigate the Indigenous health research industrial complex in order to establish and maintain ethical space. | Catherine Graham travaille prĂ©sentement avec l’Association nationale des centres d’amitiĂ© (ANCA) comme Directrice de la recherche et de la politique. Depuis plus que quinze ans, Catherine travaille en collaboration avec des organisations autochtones aux niveaux nationaux, provinciaux et rĂ©gionaux sur des problĂ©matiques liĂ©es au dĂ©veloppement organisationnel; aux dĂ©terminants sociaux de la santĂ©, tels que l’inclusion sociale; et Ă  l’équitĂ© dans le domaine de la santĂ©. Elle Ă©tait notamment Directrice du Centre des MĂ©tis de l’Organisation nationale de la santĂ© autochtone pendant quatre ans. Ses intĂ©rĂȘts de recherche comprennent les mĂ©thodologies et l’éthique de recherche autochtones, les dĂ©terminants sociaux de la santĂ©, l’analyse culturelle liĂ©e au genre, la santĂ© mentale, l’identitĂ© autochtone, et la gouvernance et la politique autochtones. Catherine est dĂ©tentrice d’une MaĂźtrise Ăšs arts en Ă©tudes juridiques de l’UniversitĂ© ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ. Elle compte faire un retour aux Ă©tudes pour continuer sa recherche doctorale en anthropologie, oĂč, en utilisant une perspective postcoloniale, elle examinera les façons Ă  travers lesquelles les chercheuses et chercheurs autochtones et non autochtones abordent le complexe de recherche en santĂ© autochtone afin d’établir et de maintenir une dimension Ă©thique.

Chaired by: Peter AndrĂ©e, PhD, is Associate Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Political Science at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ University. Prof AndrĂ©e’s research focuses on the politics of food and the environment. He practices, and teaches, community-based participatory research methods. | ÉvĂ©nement prĂ©sidĂ© par: Peter AndrĂ©e, dĂ©tenteur d’un doctorat, est professeur et prĂ©sident associĂ© du dĂ©partement des sciences politiques de l’UniversitĂ© de ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ. Sa recherche porte principalement sur les politiques agroalimentaires et sur l’environnement. Il pratique et il enseigne les mĂ©thodes de recherche participatives au niveau communautaire.

This is part two of a three-part series on the ABC’s of CCE Partnerships, where we share some of the most important things to keep in mind when engaging in a CCE Partnership. Here, we’ve identified some strategies for sharing resources in a way that empowers the community partner. This article draws from interviews and focus groups conducted in 2015-2016 as part of CFICE’s year 4 project evaluation, and includes common themes from across CFICE’s five Phase I hubs.  

A successful community-campus engagement (CCE) partnership requires adequate resources for all participants to be able to do their best work. However, access to resources such as funding, literature, and space typically lies with academic partners and institutions. One CFICE community partner acknowledged this imbalance, speaking to how much community partners rely “on academics with access to resources
We have to hope that they would be amenable to our involvement and inclusion.”

This article outlines three different resources that are important to CCE partnerships: funding, knowledge, and space. Using the results from CFICE’s year 4 project reports, we explore different challenges with, and approaches to, sharing these resources.

Sharing access to financial resources  

CFICE’s year 4 evaluation reports found that, in general, community partners are wary of the external control that institutional funders might exercise over a given project. When funding is coming from academic institutions within a CCE partnership, this power dynamic must be acknowledged and mindfully managed.

Even if funding is coming from an academic institution or from a government agency such as SSHRC, academic partners can take steps to ensure that funding is being effectively mobilized to community partners in a variety of ways.

Some CFICE hubs, such as the Community Environmental Sustainability hub in Ottawa, found a need for “greater support and ease of access to funds,” as the administration of funds fell to one faculty member, simultaneously becoming a logistical burden for them as well as creating an unequal balance of power in the partnership. Similarly, within the Poverty Reduction Hub, financial resources were found to be difficult to access by some community partners, because the “academic manages [the] purse.”

Conversely, the Community Food Security Hub found that leaving the community partner to manage how funds were used burdened the community partner with “too much responsibility and not enough resources” to effectively disseminate funding. This hub found a more collaborative approach to sharing funds was more effective.

While some community partners within the Poverty Reduction hub might have found access to financial resources to be a challenge, funding was mobilized through the employment of research assistants (RAs) whose roles were essential to keeping the project focused and on track.

The Community Environmental Sustainability Hub in Peterborough similarly found CFICE funding enabled them to increase overall capacity through hiring more RAs, expanding on fundraising activities, and increasing faculty and community capacity for knowledge mobilization.

The Community Environmental Sustainability Hub in Ottawa identified a need for adequate resources for all those involved in the partnership. They found acknowledging the “significant in-kind volunteer contributions of time, expertise and mentorship” by way of a financial stipend, for instance, was important for maintaining relationships.

Within CFICE’s Community Food Security Hub, community partners identified a need for a more efficient reimbursement process for expenses incurred by the community partner. The lengthy process for reimbursement was identified as a “bureaucratic barrier”, which particularly impacted those frontline organizations that “cannot carry the overhead of those expenses for long periods of time.”

When managing shared funds, a collaborative approach that includes both community and academic input can mitigate the perception that the academic partner has unilateral control over the funds. As well, prioritizing and being transparent about expense reimbursement processes and timelines can help manage expectations. Finally, increasing community capacity through embedded RAships and by collaboratively budgeting for honouraria or stipends for community work, can contribute to balancing financial power in CCE partnership work.

Ways to share knowledge  

Liz Weaver*, a community partner with Tamarack in the Poverty Reduction Hub, said that “when communities are trying to work and shift more complex issues like poverty, homelessness, the environment, etc., they require the shared wisdom of a wide-variety of diverse partners.” As she suggests through this observation, shared knowledge gives CCE partners power for change. Cultivating this knowledge base is important in achieving results in CCE partnerships.

Sharing knowledge effectively depends in part on the development of a shared language between community and academic partners.

Within the Community Environmental Sustainability Hub in Peterborough, developing a shared language was discussed frequently. The use of academic language was found to be a barrier that often resulted in “the culture of academia substantively driv[ing] or unduly influenc[ing]” the nature of the project. Academic partners in this context found a need for a “slow encouragement of a more common language” amongst partners, which helped shift power and control over project direction to community partners.

Of course, the necessity of a shared language is context-specific, as different community partners have differing levels of academic experience and vice versa. However, this example points to a need for partners to be aware of how jargon, academic or community-generated, can be an impediment to sharing knowledge.

Another knowledge resource that academic partners might take for granted in CCE partnerships is their unlimited access to library resources.

For instance, the Violence Against Women Hub found that full access to library resources, in particular the online resources, was desired by community partners, though effecting this access proved to be difficult. Having such access can be a significant benefit to community partners, as it can help facilitate fulsome contributions to the research at hand. One community partner saw a lack of access to library resources as a barrier erected by the university “in saying who can and cannot have access to knowledge.”

Libraries are an important resource that can be shared in CCE partnerships.

Taking the time to negotiate access to library resources for community partners during either the grant application stage or initial project meetings is a good way of showing commitment to a community-first ethos in CCE partnerships.While it might take extra time and work, academic partners can also benefit community partners by sharing their personal knowledge and skills. As one community partner said, “When the academic is really willing to put in the work, we get enormous benefits. I’ve learned a lot
but it takes real concession on the part of the academic. It takes extra effort on their part.”

Sharing personal knowledge and skills can mean sharing research knowledge and data, helping partners understand the inner-workings of the institution, or connecting community partners to key resources (people and papers!). Conversely, the academic partner can add benefit to CCE projects by committing to listening and learning from their community partners as well.

Sharing access to space

Access to something like library resources can also be synonymous with access to space. Academic institutions generally have much more (free or cheap) space available for things like meetings and events, which means that CCE meetings often get organized on university campuses.

This was true in the CFICE project as well. The Poverty Reduction Hub and the Violence Against Women Hub both identified face-to-face meetings to be crucial to the success of the project. One partner within the Violence Against Women Hub said that in-person meetings provided a space for “great information sharing” as well as a venue where concerns could be voiced that might not have come to light otherwise.

However, as found within the Poverty Reduction hub’s report, something as simple as campus parking costs and availability had the potential to create a “huge power imbalance” for community partners.

Conversely, “in-kind donations ([such as] meeting space, meals for focus group participants) greatly facilitated the work of the project,” said one community partner of the ways in which hosting on-campus events helped increase community capacity.

Balancing power and enhancing community capacity

Overall, the ongoing challenge in sharing resources is how access to resources—including funding, knowledge, and space—is managed by academic institutions. Within the context of large academic institutions, community partners are wary of academic knowledge being seen as ‘above’ community knowledge, and how this dynamic is reflected in things like funding decisions, access to space and other resources, like libraries.

As Leighann Burns*, a community partner in the Violence Against Women Hub, emphasized, participating in CCE projects “provid[es] resources and possibilities for those of us on the front lines to implement things we would like to do but don’t have the resources to do.”

By mobilizing funding, allowing access to institutional knowledge sources such as libraries, and being mindful of sharing space in a way that is convenient and accessible to all partners, academic partners can help balance power in CCE partnerships and enhance community capacity.

The attributed quotes used in this article came from CFICE’s Midterm Review Report, which was posted publicly to our website in February, 2016.

What is Collective Impact?

Collective Impact is the model for effecting change embraced by the Poverty Reduction Hub’s community partners. Kania and Kramer coined the term Collective Impact in 2011, which includes five core strategies:

• a common agenda,
• shared measurement,
• mutually reinforcing activities,
• continuous communications,
• and a backbone infrastructure.

When the Poverty Reduction (PR) Hub’s partner, Vibrant Communities’ local partners formed poverty reduction roundtables, the five conditions of collective impact were intuitively in place. identified a shared approach, and each community developed a local strategy based on a common “agenda” design. The communities created a shared measurement framework that tracked progress not only locally, but also at the pan-Canadian level. Vibrant Communities formed the backbone infrastructure of the Poverty Reduction Hub.

Employing Collective Impact in the Poverty Reduction Hub?

The first unofficial step of the process was to build our relationship. The community co-lead and I had what I consider an ‘arranged partnership’. We needed to take the time to see how our personalities, goals, and work style fit with one another. As we both lived in different cities, we took the time to commute to each other’s work spaces as a way to enhance the conversation, equalize power, and learn each other’s professional lingo.

Our first step was to establish a common agenda through ongoing conversations between the two of us. Once we had agreed on funding demonstration projects driven by Vibrant Communities’ members, while exploring their models of community campus engagement (CCE), we brought the agenda to the broader PR Hub for their input, review, and buy-in. This began our tradition of continuous communication where the hub co-leads make decisions equally, and regularly communicate them to project partners at monthly conference calls.

Due to the vast distance between our project partners, once a year, the entire PR Hub would gather for a face-to-face meeting. We have rotated cities each time so that we learn about each other’s projects in a tangible, hands-on way.  We would review the progress of the demonstration projects and discuss our on-going investigations into models of community campus engagement. These became our mutually reinforcing activities. We enjoyed our times together and made progress toward our goals.

The final strategy in collective impact is shared measurement. Annually, during the face-to-face meetings, project participants were asked to describe their relationships, and reflect on how their models had changed. This process, facilitated by internal evaluators and hub co-leaders, allowed participants to discuss, challenge, and weave narratives to accompany the visual representations of community campus partnerships around poverty reduction.

As a result, the narratives and visual representations of CCE, generated by our poverty reduction partners, can be used by other communities that seek a model or wish to build a specific community campus strategy of their own.

Collective Impact is an important tool for facilitating community campus engagement in order to have an impact on an important policy issue like reducing poverty. For more information please visit and .

On September 24, Liz Weaver animated an all-day Community Collaboration Forum in London, Ontario.  Attended by 170 participants from the non-profit, university and government sectors, the event was organized by the Pillar Nonprofit Network.

The event included a panel entitled “Putting Collective Impact into Practice,” and involved Tom Cooper of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction, Cheryl Rose of Social Innovation Generation at the University of Waterloo, and Ted Jackson from CFICE.

The Tamarack Institute is one of North America’s leaders in the emerging field of collective impact.

This work was presented at the CUExpo conference in Corner Brook in June by Karen Schwartz and Polly Leonard of ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ University, Mary MacKeigan of Opportunities Waterloo, and Regena Farnsworth of the University of British Columbia, with contributions from Liz Weaver, Terry Mitchell and Barry Galloway. Karen Schwartz also presented an abbreviated version in Victoria at the ANSER conference. And Liz Weaver  presented the Poverty Hub’s work at the Community Development Society conference in Charleston in July.