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 ÐÓ°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 ÐÓ°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 ÐÓ°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.

Developed by the CFICE Tools Working Group, this project development checklist toolkit helps community organizations assess whether they are well suited to a community-campus engagement project and how they can best prepare themselves to start a research project with an academic partner.

In the following video, Tara shares some of the details of this toolkit, which is being developed as a bilingual interactive website tool for release in late November. Stay tuned for our upcoming webinar on the details of this toolkit, which will be happening in early December!

In this webinar, presenters from the Volunteer Action Centre in Waterloo Region (VAC) and Laurier University shared their experiences finding, initiating and building mutually beneficial community-campus engagement (CCE) relationships.

The webinar touched on:

• Volunteer Action Centre’s history of CSL brokering
• Wilfrid Laurier University’s experience working with the Volunteer Action Centre
• Tips and Pointers for connecting with a Post-Secondary Institution in your area

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 presentation as a PDF (includes two slides with tips and pointers for connecting with your local post-secondary institutions!).

Presenters

Jane Hennig is the Executive Director of the Volunteer Action Centre, which provides services that strengthen the capacity of nearly 200 charity and not-for-profit organizations to engage and support volunteerism in Waterloo Region. Jane currently provides sector leadership through her work on the Board of Directors for Volunteer Canada and on committees for Wellbeing Waterloo Region and the City of Waterloo Neighbourhood Strategy. She is an active participant in the Ontario Volunteer Centre Network and continuously works to demonstrate the value of community engagement locally and beyond. Jane previously served on the steering committee for the Canadian Alliance for Community Service Learning (CACSL) and the steering committee for Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE). While her involvement in national work related to Community Service Learning has stepped back in recent years, she and her staff continue to work closely with faculty and staff at Conestoga College, University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University.

Shannon Pennington is a Community Service-Learning (CSL) Coordinator with Community and Workplace Partnerships in the department of Co-operative Education at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Waterloo campus.  Shannon works with faculty at Laurier and community partners in the Kitchener-Waterloo area to coordinate community-engaged partnerships for courses and academic programs at Laurier.  Shannon enjoys taking a CSL approach to building partnerships, incorporating collaboration, reciprocity, and high quality reflective practices.  She has been involved with CSL at Laurier for 9 years.

Lisa Jarvis is the Manager, Community & Workplace Partnerships at Wilfrid Laurier University. This unit coordinates curricular Community-Service Learning and Work-Integrated Learning experiences. Coming into this new role about a year ago and being back in Waterloo, Lisa is again connected to organizations and people in the non-profit sector in Waterloo region where she began as a Social Worker in 2006. Lisa has lived and seen the transformative power that experiences like CSL can have on young people and believes creating opportunities for students to get out of the classroom and meet teachers and mentors in the community, be in relationship with people who are different than they are, and reflect on these experiences, can be a powerful tool in creating a more compassionate Canadian society.

Moderator: Tara McWhinney is currently enrolled in the PhD program at the School of Social Work at ÐÓ°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.

In Phase 1 of the CFICE project a series of community campus engagement projects looked at how to improve community impacts through collaborative research projects. The need for a toolkit to help guide community organizations on the process of partnering with academics for research projects was identified through this work. As a result, I have been working with the CFICE team, community stakeholders, and others to finalize a toolkit that will help community organizations navigate community-based research with academic institutions.

What is the toolkit?

The toolkit is essentially a project development list designed for community organizations trying to decide if they want to conduct research and whether they should seek an academic partner to work with to conduct this research.

There is no ‘right’ number of questions to have answers to before seeking a research partnership or conducting research. Instead, this toolkit can be used to help guide community organizations to think about all the elements of a research project to determine if it’s something they want to or are able to pursue.

What will it do?

The project development list covers each step of the research process. When using this the tool online, more information can be obtained about each step, including a resource list and sample tools to help develop answers to research questions. Resources provided include research toolkits, road maps, templates, frameworks, and definitions.

The Toolkit will help community organizations navigate the research process with academics.

How will it help Community-Based Organizations (CBOs)?

The toolkit is essentially an informational resource for community organizations that promotes a community-first approach to partnering with academics. The informative project development list acts a research guide for things to consider for community organizations conducting a research project and helps explain the process of contacting and maintaining communication with academic partners.

How is it being developed (process)?

The toolkit was initially developed by Aaron Kozak a Research Assistant with the CFICE project and recent graduate from ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University. Tara McWhinney a PhD student with the School of Social Work has continued development of the tool by conducting a series of consultations on tool content with individuals from community organizations, social work academics and several academics and community partners involved in the CFICE project. This process has included one-on-one meetings with community organizations, a poster presentation at the CASWE conference at Congress, attendance at a regional roundtable on community campus engagement and email communication with those involved in the CFICE project. The feedback and information gained through these consultations and conferences is being incorporated into the toolkit.

When will it be ready?

Revisions of the tool are almost finished! We expect to have the toolkit online in the upcoming fall term of 2018.

How will it be shared?

The toolkit with be housed at the ’s website at ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´â€™s School of Social Work. Essentially the tool will form a series of linked webpages with information from the project development list as well as links to outside resources. Efforts will be made to promote the toolkit through the CFICE project networks and there are plans for a webinar in the fall to demonstrate and further promote the tool.

Want to learn more? Connect with us at cfice@carleton.ca!