Archives - Community First

DISCUSSION PAPER: CCE Policy and Funding: The Challenge Ahead

nicolebedford — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 12:00:50 +0000

Community-Campus Engage Canada (CCEC) is an emerging national network and community of practice focused on strengthening Canadian communities by increasing the capacity, infrastructure and impact of equitable community-campus partnerships of all types, including student experiential learning, community-engaged research, and social innovation. Supportive policy and funding frameworks for Community-Campus Engagement (CCE) are crucial to the work. Canadian communities will be stronger when there are better collaborative structures to link together post-secondary institutions (PSIs), community-based organizations (CBOs), funding agencies (including governmental bodies and pri-vate foundations) and other networks.

Yet there are challenges in developing CCE across Canada. This discussion paper briefly reviews these challenges based on comparisons with international CCE network infrastructures. The paper touches on provincial funding of CCE, federal funding, and foundation funding. The paper then examines a new funding partnership in development between the CCEC and Mitacs.

Click on the image below to download a PDF version of this discussion paper or CLICK HERE to access the paper in FRENCH.

Growing Accessible Experiential Learning and Community-Campus Engagement in Canada

nicolebedford — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 12:00:55 +0000

by Kawsar Mohamed, CFICE CCEC Administrative Research Assistant

Kawsar Mohamed, CCEC Administrative Research Assistant, is passionate about building community.

As a student with a disability, I am not surprised about the recent findings of , which demonstrate that unemployment rates among people with disabilities are at least twice the national and provincial levels of all age groups. I was therefore ecstatic when I found out that �Ӱ�ԭ�� University’s Paul Menton Centre for Students with Disabilities had partnered with the Government of Ontario to create a program that offers work-integrated learning placements for students with disabilities. Participating in the CUAEL program has given me a new opportunity to build my skills, while at the same time contributing to work that builds new opportunities for others through community-campus engagement.

�Ӱ�ԭ�� University’s Accessible Experiential Learning (CUAEL) project is funded by the Ontario government through their career-ready fund and aims to provide 300 students with hands-on experience by subsidizing pay to employers that offer employment to students with disabilities.

After registering for the program, I was offered the opportunity to apply to jobs that matched my skills, interests, and education. This matching factor alone makes the program valuable because it gives students the chance to get the necessary experience to apply for the right professional jobs after their studies. My personal interest is to work in a field where I can use the skills that I have gained from my studies in law and human rights, such as research and analysis or communication and strategic planning, so I applied to a number of jobs that incorporated this skill development into the position.

The application process involved receiving emails from the CUAEL team with links to jobs that might interest me and sending my resume to the jobs I found interesting. Eventually, I was interviewed and was hired for the Community-Campus Engage Canada (CCEC) Administrative Research Assistant (RA) position.

CCEC is an emerging network composed of academics, civil society, and funding organizations from across Canada that has emerged as a legacy of the seven-year 2012-2019 Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE) participatory research project based at �Ӱ�ԭ�� Unversity. CCEC seeks to strengthen connections between community-campus engagement practitioners and co-create socially innovative research, experiential learning and community-first projects that are equitable, ethical, and respectful of all participants.

I have been working with them for three weeks now, and I find the experience fulfilling. I work with a great staff, and the work that CCEC does relates to my core interest in strengthening Canadian communities. As a participant of the CUAEL project, I can attest that the CUAEL program is doing what it sets out to do, not only by providing the students with necessary skill development, but also by addressing the employment gap of a growing group of persons with disabilities.

The CUAEL project also helps employers work through barriers they might have with respect to funding and hiring persons with disabilities. According to Amanda Bettencourt, the senior special projects officer of the CUAEL project, employers often don’t know what the field of accessibility looks like, nor do they know how to navigate it. So a lot of CUAEL’s work is to educate and increase awareness.

The choice to create the CUAEL project as an employment-based skill development program as opposed to a volunteer-based one is a vital part of what makes this program important in shifting employer attitudes and enhancing future opportunities for persons with disabilities. Studies show that the way that paid placements do since the skills acquired in voluntary positions are often skills that support, complement, and extend the work of paid staff but are not the specific skills employers are seeking.

Students also frequently find themselves in precarious financial situations where they are struggling to pay for their studies while at the same time juggling living expenses. For example, a recent on student financial access to food completed by CFICE partner Meal Exchange demonstrated that food insecurity—the lack of physical and/or economic access to adequate and appropriate food—was experienced by 39% of surveyed students, with certain demographic groups experiencing much higher rates of food insecurity compared to their peers. Ensuring that the CUAEL project provides students with disabilities access to paid employment helps to reduce their risk of experiencing precarious financial situations, including food insecurity.

Similar to the development of the CUAEL fund, CCEC is currently working with Mitacs to develop a more inclusive fund to support community-campus engagement in Canada. This fund is meant to support community-first research, and knowledge creation focused on societal wellbeing and sustainability. It builds on Mitacs’ already successful Accelerate program, which sees graduate students employed by partner community organizations to work on research-based projects under community and academic supervision.

The intention is to create two new pools of funding through the new CCEC-Mitacs fund: One pool will fund graduate research students, post-docs and eligible college students embedded in non-profit community organizations. These students or post-graduates will work on research projects under community supervision, supported by the students’ academic supervisor. The second pool will support other activities undertaken by these organizations (including supporting their engagement in the research, where appropriate) that may not be eligible for matching Mitacs funding

By advocating for this new fund, CCEC and its partners are paving the way for more thoughtful funding programs that will make community-campus engagement opportunities available to as many people as possible, just as �Ӱ�ԭ�� University’s Paul Menton Centre has done with its CUAEL project.

�Ӱ�ԭ�� Hosts Launch of Community-Campus Engage Canada

nicolebedford — Thu, 05 Jul 2018 12:00:38 +0000

By Tyrone Burke
Photos by Chris Roussakis

The ivory tower’s walls are getting a little more permeable.

For the past six years, the SSHRC-funded action research project Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE) has studied how players on campus and in the community can partner to co-create knowledge and positively impact communities. As the project enters its final year, it’s looking to leave a legacy.

On June 20, academics joined civil society and funding organizations from across Canada at �Ӱ�ԭ�� University to launch Community-Campus Engage Canada, a network that will strengthen connections between participating institutions and co-create socially innovative research that’s equitable, ethical and respectful.

“This is a powerful moment,” says Peter Andrée, associate professor of Political Science and principal investigator for CFICE.

“We have an opportunity to bring people together – an opportunity to model civil society in a new way. Today, we bring many people together, including community organizations that know the value of this work, have learned how to do it well, and in some cases have had to push back against universities and colleges. This is what we need. These voices will help set the direction forward.”

Academia hasn’t always had the best track record when it comes to creating research for and about marginalized communities. Too often, research done without collaboration has had little impact – or worse, actually harmed those it sought to help.

“Our goal as engaged campuses should be to lift up community,” says Catherine Graham of the National Association of Friendship Centres, which represents the urban centres that are the primary providers of programs and services for urban Indigenous people.

“To that end, I’m asking that people consider who the experts are in any given research project. If academics were the experts, we wouldn’t be out there asking the questions. It’s the community that are the experts, and they conduct research every day. Life is about doing research. That’s how we navigate the world. We have questions. We experience challenges, and we have to look at the world around us, or on the Internet, to find out how we can overcome and address those challenges to improve our lives, and the lives of those who come after us.”

Meaningful Community Engagement

Andrée agrees that meaningful community engagement is critical. It’s the driving force behind the creation of Community-Campus Engage Canada.

“Knowledge is not just coming from the professor,” he says. “Community-based research is maybe best thought of as being co-created with partners. In the fourth year of CFICE, we brought all of the evaluation data together and said collectively, where do we go from here?

CFICE created the Aligning Institutions for Community Impact working group to co-ordinate the efforts of universities, colleges, funders, and community organizations to ensure community engagement is productive. That working group is morphing into Community-Campus Engage Canada and bringing new partners to the table to create a national network that shares knowledge and advocates with provincial governments and federal agencies.

It will seek to address specific challenges community organizations face, such as under-representation in internships funded by Mitacs, a non-profit, national research organization that receives public funds to support research partnerships between universities and industry. Mitacs-funded internships require that funds be matched, and Community-Campus Engage Canada is looking at ways to better make that happen.

“We’re talking about creating an innovation fund that would pull together some money from the philanthropic sector that supports education, community development and social innovation,” Andrée says.

“(We’re) saying to the sector, you support all this stuff, why don’t you put your money with a fund that can be used to create matching money for Mitacs grants for community organizations who want graduate and postdoctoral interns to further their work.”

Enhancing Educational Experience for Students

And while Community-Campus Engage Canada’s primary goal is to co-create research that positively impacts communities, it also promises an enhanced educational experience for students.

“Students want to feel connected,” Andrée says, “to work on aspirational types of projects, to feel hope. Community-engaged experiential learning projects really give them something to get excited about. Different types of learners thrive in community projects. They give students a sense of purpose they never had before.

“It’s also important for research — outcomes are better when research is co-created with its users, when they help design questions and are part of data analysis. They’re the ones who can directly implement the results. Knowledge mobilization is a big buzzword in universities, but a lot of research doesn’t translate quickly. In partnerships, research translates very quickly.

“Then there’s a third side of this: the reputation of the post-secondary sector. There are many questions being asked about universities – are they worth the public money we invest in them? This type of work shows the benefits of research to the public, and that has a reputational benefit. The legitimacy of the post-secondary sector is enhanced when community engagement is done well.”

PODCAST & STORY: When Governments are ‘Community-First’

nicolebedford — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 12:00:54 +0000

Story and podcast by Nicole Bedford, CFICE Project Manager and Communications Coordinator

Sometimes it’s hard to trace the direct impact that government programs have on our communities. This is partly because on-the-ground projects leading to community change often receive funding from many sources, including private donors, industry partners, foundations, and various levels of government. In the end, the question remains: Who gets the (most) credit for project outcomes and impacts?

Listen to the podcast below, or continue scrolling to read the full story! Download a PDF of the podcast transcript.

In Food Secure Canada’s (FSC) case, a partnership through the government-funded has had a direct impact on their ability to contribute to consultations on building a Food Policy for Canada. With the Government of Canada’s extremely short �ɾ��Ի�Ƿ�— to be exact—having a Mitacs Postdoctoral Fellow provided FSC with additional policy and research expertise at just the right time.

“Being able to hire Amanda Wilson through Mitacs has given FSC the capacity to increase the number of voices being heard in the Government of Canada’s consultation process,” says Diana Bronson, Executive Director of FSC. “Amanda’s efforts, our partnerships with entities like and CFICE, along with the work of the FSC team as a whole, have lead to a much more robust engagement process around national food policy.”

According to the Mitacs website, the goal of the Accelerate program is to put “talent to work with an organization that needs it.” They do this by matching community or industry partner funding for research projects that include a postdoctoral student, a supervising professor and a partner organization. The project submitted by FSC, in collaboration with Amanda and supervising Lakehead University professor Charles Levkoe, was titled .

Amanda Wilson worked as a post-doctoral student for Food Secure Canada.

“Our goal with this project was to increase the capacity of community and academic partners to contribute to a national food policy process,” explains Amanda. “We wanted to experiment with different ways of collaborating and sharing resources for policy impact, all with the goal of pushing for more just, healthy and sustainable food policy.”

Through the project, Amanda has been able to take the lead on developing policy briefs (notably FSC’s and their ) and engaging with FSC members and academic partners to generate and refine policy recommendations. This included outreach to academic allies of FSC, as well as targeted engagement around New Farmers and Northern Food.

FSC has a long history of community-academic collaboration. A partner in CFICE since the beginning of Phase I, FSC creates space and opportunities for academics, non-profits, and community organizations to work together on research and advocacy for a just and sustainable food system.

“From day one, working with Food Secure Canada has been a bit of a whirlwind,” recalls Amanda. I’ve been involved in so many different events and processes. But it’s been a great opportunity to build relationships with community organizations and academics across Canada and to hopefully have a real impact on the government’s policy-building process.”

While the results of FSC’s advocacy efforts are not yet fully available—the first draft of A Food Policy for Canada won’t be out until mid-2018—the impact of having matching funds for Amanda’s position are clear.

“We wouldn’t have been able to generate the same depth and breadth of policy analysis, or connect with our members to the same degree without Amanda’s help,” says Diana. “The Mitacs funding has really increased our ability to meet our core goal of supporting the food movement to engage in meaningful policy change. The best part is that the funding lasts for two years, which allows us to breathe and really maximize Amanda’s contributions to our organization.”

As for Amanda, she’s happy she’s had the opportunity to work on such a high-profile policy process that incorporates so many of the crucial issues facing our food system. “Working in a community context, there’s a tangible impact of the work I’m doing that you don’t get in a strictly academic context, which is something I really appreciate.”

With another year of funding left for Amanda’s postdoctoral position, this collaboration is sure to continue generating important policy insight that contributes to a stronger food movement in Canada.

Become more community-first!

To learn more about how to make your work more community-first, check out our list of actions for all community-campus engagement practitioners!

MITACS and SSHRC Joint Initiative to Support Graduate Students

Jay Gatsby — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 13:38:10 +0000

Mitacs and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council are pleased to announce a joint initiative to create stronger connections between Canadian companies and social sciences and humanities graduate students.