Community Partnership

U of T Scarborough collaborates with local community centre on culturally relevant food security

siddiq22 — Wed, 24 May 2023 13:59:36 +0000

U of T Scarborough collaborates with local community centre on culturally relevant food security

siddiq22 Wed, 05/24/2023 - 09:59

Cutline

The Centre for Immigrant and Community Services in Scarborough is growing 26 kinds of vegetables in its greenhouse for use in its food bank (photo by Christopher Katsarov Luna)

Alexa Battler

Topic

Our Community

Community Engagement

Community Partnership

Food Security

Social Innovation

U of T Scarborough

Subheadline

The Centre for Immigrant and Community Services has been working with the Culinaria Research Centre to examine how the pandemic impacted food systems

In addition to the usual canned and dry goods available at their food bank, Scarborough's Centre for Immigrant and Community Services (CICS) also grows 26 different kinds of vegetables, served weekly to more than 200 families who visit the centre.

The CICS greenhouse and gardens produce about 1,700 pounds of food per year – all donated as part of the Sustainable and Accessible for Empowering Communities (SAFE) project.

Bush beans and Oregon sugar pod green peas are among the culturally relevant plants growing in the CICS greenhouse (photo by Christopher Katsarov Luna)

“We've seen more and more people that might have been just above the poverty line are now finding themselves below that line,” says Brian Joyce, director of community services and operations at CICS.

“We could see the needs of the populations we were observing – they needed access to food. And over the last year that's just amplified with high inflation and cost of food.”

In 2020, CICS opened a pop-up food bank, teaming up with the Feeding City Lab, a research network of the Culinaria Research Centre at U of Toronto Scarborough that investigates how the pandemic impacted food systems.

The lab surveyed community members and found many were lacking vegetables to make their own cultural dishes. That data helped CICS secure funding for its greenhouse, and identified which vegetables were most needed.

“It's not just about food security, but it's about food sovereignty. People are taking charge of how they want their food systems to work. They are bringing their ethnocultural lens to it as well,” says Jo Sharma, an associate professor of historical and cultural studies at the Culinaria Research Centre and director of the Feeding City Lab who is cross-appointed to the department for the study of religion and the Asian Institute.

The greenhouse and raised garden beds at CICS (photo by Christopher Katsarov Luna)

Siobhan Bonisteel, a PhD candidate in environmental science at U of T Scarborough and community partnership representative with the Feeding City Lab, is one of several researchers supporting CICS. She’s using her expertise on community food systems to help the CICS team gather data on the SAFE project’s impact on the food bank and wider community.

“Feeding City and CICS are understanding the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in real time,” Bonisteel says. “Both inform each other and work together to broaden our collective understanding of community food issues, including resiliency to threats such as pandemics.”

Joyce says the data will not only help entice funders, but will help illustrate the project as a model for other organizations. It will also guide which new plants the centre tries to grow, as families accessing the food bank represent a range of cultural backgrounds.

“We're serving a wide variety of different people and we're introducing them to all these other services at CICS – like settlement services, early years programming and fitness programming that they might not have known about,” Joyce says.

The SAFE project also encompasses the centre’s industrial-sized community kitchen, which is used for cooking courses and as a place to share knowledge and build community.

The gardens are similarly a place for connection, and Joyce wants to bring in many other local organizations to collaborate. For example, the South Asian Cultural and Health Association for Youth and Seniors is planting ethno-culturally significant plants for diasporic Asian community members in CICS's raised garden beds.

Austin Boyne, a facilitator at the CICS urban farm, tends to the plants in the greenhouse
(photo by Christopher Katsarov Luna)

Shathvahi Ramesh, a fourth-year undergraduate student studying environmental ethics and religion in the Faculty of Arts and Science and a former intern with Sharma’s team, worked with the Feeding City Lab to connect CICS with the Malvern Urban Farm, which grows culturally significant plants in one of Scarborough’s hydro fields. Community farmers are growing seeds in the greenhouse to later transfer them to their gardens.

Ramesh says community organizations are often in an ideal position to help one another – but just might not know it. U of T Scarborough alumna Amanda Wedge has recently taken over as the co-ordinator for the Scarborough Food Network, which aims to bring a range of local organizations and stakeholders (including the Feeding City Lab) together, with monthly meetings dedicated to updates.

“It helps folks feel like they're not one lone entity just fighting their own fight or alone in their work. Together is always better,” Ramesh says. "It also helps build institutional memory.”

Add new story tags

Culinaria Research Centre; Feeding City Lab

Indigenous communities drive Connaught-funded research projects

rahul.kalvapalle — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 18:06:45 +0000

Indigenous communities drive Connaught-funded research projects

rahul.kalvapalle Wed, 06/30/2021 - 14:06

Cutline

Clockwise, from top left: Eve Tuck, Teresa Edwards, Suzanne Stewart, Clayton Shirt, Alissa North and Shianne McKay.

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Our Community

Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health

Community Partnership

Connaught Fund

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Indigenous

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Research & Innovation

How can traditional knowledge be harnessed to help Indigenous people heal from the trauma of residential schools? Where do Indigenous community organizations want to focus efforts to recover healthy relationships to their lands? How can youth perspectives be meaningfully engaged for the betterment of the next generation of Indigenous Peoples?

These are some of the questions that will be explored by Indigenous-led non-profit and community organizations in collaboration with the ��Ƶ’s Eve Tuck as part of the Land Education Design Project.

Eve Tuck (photo by Red Works)

Working together, the partners will create an incubator to support three Indigenous community organizations and a youth research collective. The initiative aims to nurture land-based education programs that are designed by – and for – Indigenous Peoples and their communities.

“Land education is education that happens with intentional relationships to land,” says Tuck, a member of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, Alaska and an associate professor of critical race and Indigenous studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE).

“This has always been the way that Indigenous Peoples have learned – in relationship to land and to one another.”

The Land Education Design Project is one of nine U of T projects supported by the Connaught Community Partnerships Research Program’s Indigenous funding stream. The stream aims to boost Indigenous community-driven research at U of T with culturally safe projects that place Indigenous values and principles at the forefront.

The projects, each of which are receiving $50,000 in funding, were compiled by U of T’s Indigenous Research Circle through a consultative process that put the interests and concerns of Indigenous communities at the forefront. That’s in contrast to the competitive funding process that typically governs most post-secondary research projects.

Suzanne Stewart (photo courtesy Suzanne Stewart)

“We reached out to 600 Indigenous community organizations and First Nations across Canada and told them that we were interested in hearing if anybody had any research that they wished to do, and that we would like to explore matching them with researchers at U of T who had the skills, knowledge and capabilities to work with them,” says Associate Professor Suzanne Stewart, the provost’s academic adviser on Indigenous research and director of the Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

Next, the Indigenous Research Circle contacted U of T researchers with a track record in Indigenous-focused research. Those who were keen to participate were then introduced to the community partners and discussions held to explore opportunities for collaboration.

“What was different about this was that it was community-driven and co-operative, rather than academic-driven and competitive,” says Stewart. “We strove to really base every part of the process on Indigenous principles such as co-operation, relationship, transparency, honesty and non-interference – cornerstones of Indigenous cultural values.”

Several of the community organizations were understandably skeptical given past experiences with university researchers that had left them disillusioned.

Clayton Shirt (photo courtesy of Clayton Shirt)

“They’ve had many researchers come to them before and say, ‘This is the problem, this is how it is and this is what we’re going to do’ – there was always this talking down,” says Clayton Shirt, Traditional Knowledge Keeper and member of U of T’s Indigenous Research Circle who hails from the Wolf Clan of Saddle Lake Alberta, Treaty 6. “It was never community-led.”

Shirt says he and Cathy Fournier, special projects officer at U of T’s Indigenous Research Network, had to work to assure community representatives that their relationships with the U of T researchers would be centred on trust and mutuality, and that the research would truly be steered by their ideas.

In the case of the Land Education Design Project, that means Indigenous community organizations will determine how they want to wield land education to benefit their people, says Teresa Edwards, executive director of the Legacy of Hope Foundation – which is working with OISE’s Tuck on the initiative.

Teresa Edwards (photo courtesy of Teresa Edwards)

“We expect the community partners will work out what have been the costs or harms to their relationships with the land based on colonial harms – such as what survivors experienced while in residential and day schools or within the Sixties Scoop, and the racism they have experienced in Canada,” says Edwards. “As well, based on understanding these situations, they can start to identify effective and locally relevant remedies that would directly address these harms.”

Edwards cites substance abuse, depression and self-harming as examples of behaviours linked to trauma that could be addressed through cultural revitalization and land-based healing models.

“We reviewed additional research confirming the importance and power of land-based healing and treatment for Indigenous Peoples that was locally informed and shaped and empowered survivors,” says Edwards. “In partnering with Dr. Tuck, we adapted our interests with her expertise so that a land education project could move forward, paving the way for the foundation to increase our capacity to do community research that resulted in concrete, positive, culturally-informed action.”

For Tuck, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Methodologies with Youth and Communities, the project taps into a longstanding interest in youth participatory design research.

“One of the lines of my work is youth participatory action research, where we bring teenagers into collectives and teach them the same things that I teach my graduate students – how to do qualitative research including interviews, focus groups, photovoice and other visual methods,” Tuck says.

“In this instance, where our research question is, ‘What are the kinds of land education programs that residential school survivors and their families desire?’ – youth participatory research is a very fitting method.”

One of the other projects funded by the Connaught Community Partnerships Research Program uses Indigenous knowledge to help the natural environment – specifically Lake Winnipeg’s south basin.

Over the last several decades, Lake Winnipeg has suffered from eutrophication, or an increase in minerals and nutrients that results in excessive growth of algae that affects drinking water, fishing and enjoyment of the lake. To help address this problem, the Connaught Indigenous funding stream is supporting a project that will explore how Indigenous and Western knowledge can be combined to create natural infrastructure – such as the planting of vegetation to clean water and air – aimed at reversing the eutrophication.

Alissa North (photo courtesy of Alissa North)

“The idea that these two knowledges can build on and support one another towards environmental repair is an amazing agenda and will be hugely important to solving the complexities of eutrophication,” says Alissa North, an associate professor of landscape architecture at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, who will be working with the Winnipeg-based Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources (CIER) on the project.

To that end, North, her graduate students and CIER will hold virtual “Knowledge Circles” – community engagements with First Nations – to exchange ideas and share perspectives that could inform future natural infrastructure projects. North’s team will then work with CIER to put together a guidebook that draws on the insights gleaned from the Knowledge Circles.

Shianne McKay (photo courtesy of Shianne McKay)

Shianne McKay, senior project manager at CIER, explains the value of incorporating Indigenous Knowledge by using the example of a community seeking to build a wetland.

“You could bring in Elders and Indigenous Knowledge Keepers to inform on the types of plant species that could be grown there – because some of our most powerful medicines are found in the wetland areas,” says McKay, who is Ojibway and a member of the Pine Creek First Nation.

“So, to have people at the table with that knowledge while designing something like that would be really beneficial.”

McKay says the exchange of knowledge will also help Indigenous communities learn more about the process of building natural infrastructure, which could have a long-lasting impact.

“It’s providing communities with examples of what is possible and teaching them about the different types of natural infrastructure, so that they can envision what’s beneficial to their communities and how they can use natural infrastructure to help mitigate different environment problems,” she says.

The project is part of a long-term effort by the Collaborative Leadership Initiative – which comprises elected leaders in the Winnipeg Metropolitan Region and First Nations chiefs – to boost environmental health and community well-being, with the health of Lake Winnipeg representing a key priority.

“It’s a great way to advance the work the Collaborative Leadership Initiative was already undertaking,” says Richard Farthing-Nichol, project manager at CIER. “CIER has been around for 25 years, so we have relationships with these communities and work with them already.”

Farthing-Nichol notes that the project can serve as an example of genuine dialogue and reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, and ways of knowing.

“Incorporating Indigenous and Western knowledge on an equal basis is something that we have to do from the very outset, and throughout the project planning, design and construction,” he says. “You shouldn’t build natural infrastructure unless you’re also trying to build those relationships.”

For the members of U of T’s Indigenous Research Circle, the coming-together of university faculty and Indigenous communities to pursue community-driven research is a watershed event that could serve as a model for the future. Stewart says she’s been “overwhelmed” by the university’s willingness to let the Indigenous Research Circle work to explore research possibilities without interference.

“This is really the first time that we, Indigenous Peoples, have been granted autonomy and sovereignty within any research funding system within a university,” she says.

“I’ve never heard of research funding based on Indigenous values and principles happening before. As far as I know, no other university in Canada or around the world has done this.”

Shirt similarly highlighted the opportunity to build a new relationship.

“I feel honoured to be able to say that I saw this massive institution called U of T give us the place to plant these seeds,” he says. “This has the potential of growing into something really beautiful.”

Power in partnership: U of T initiative funds collaborative research between faculty and community organizations

noreen.rasbach — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 05:00:00 +0000

Power in partnership: U of T initiative funds collaborative research between faculty and community organizations

noreen.rasbach Wed, 02/06/2019 - 00:00

Cutline

James Noronha and YiWen Shao of Special Olympics Ontario will be collaborating with Rebecca Renwick (centre) on a joint research initiative on inclusion in sports (photo by Romi Levine)

Romi Levine

Topic

Our Community

Community Partnership

Connaught Fund

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Information

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Faculty of Medicine

Indigenous

Research & Innovation

U of T Mississauga

A new ��Ƶ initiative aimed at promoting collaborative research between faculty members and community organizations has chosen its first project recipients: seven researchers who will work with groups on issues ranging from HIV prevention for gay and bisexual men to suicide reduction in Indigenous populations.

The Community Partnership Research Program – sponsored by U of T’s Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation and supported by the Vice-President and Provost's University Fund and the Connaught Fund – will provide up to three years of funding to the seven researchers and their community partners.

“We are pleased to support researchers who are engaging with community groups to collaboratively develop proposals to address real-world problems,” said Vivek Goel, vice-president of research and innovation.

“The Community Partnership Research Program builds on the university’s long-standing work with organizations while providing support for researchers and their partners who are forging new relationships to conduct impactful research.”

The research program’s organizers say they received an overwhelming response to their call for applications, with 42 groups submitting proposals. They decided, in turn, to expand the number of accepted proposals from four to seven and increase program funding from $600,000 to more than $800,000 for three years.

“This uptake shows that the program responds to a need that's out there,” said Goel.

The initiative is intended to help create new research partnerships, or nurture new partnerships, between the university and community groups, gaining access to each other’s knowledge, expertise and capabilities on issues of shared interest . The hope is that over time, the partnerships may evolve into more established relationships that will address meaningful issues for the community partners and successfully attract external funding.

Eligible partners include not-for-profit organizations, philanthropic foundations and municipal, territorial or provincial governments.

Guidelines for what constitutes community-based research were purposefully broad in order to encourage a wide range of multidisciplinary groups. And it worked: The applications come from across the university’s three campuses and many faculties. Community partners will serve as co-leads on projects.

For Rebecca Renwick, a professor in the Faculty of Medicine’s department of occupational science and occupational therapy, the research program will help her and her faculty co-lead Kelly Arbour-Nicitopoulos, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education, build a strong working relationship with their community partner – Special Olympics Ontario. The group will be working together to explore the relationship between belonging and inclusion in sport for people with intellectual disabilities.

“Everybody is bringing something different to this research team so I think this will help us have more of a collaboration,” Renwick said.

“Research doesn't have to be all observational, it can also be inclusive. We can include that which we are observing in the actual process of determining what we are observing,” said James Noronha, director of program development for Special Olympics Ontario.

David Brennan, an associate professor in the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, will be teaming up with organizations including the Gay Men’s Sexual Health Alliance and the AIDS Committee of Toronto with the aim of increasing access to care and services that will help to reduce the impact of HIV, mental health issues and substance abuse among gay and bisexual men.

For organizations like the Gay Men’s Sexual Health Alliance, collaboration with academic partners is “infinitely valuable,” said its director, Phillip Banks.

“Sometimes there are issues that don't have existing solutions so it really helps to bring in the research side of things. It helps us to look at the problems we're seeing and the work we're doing,” he said.

The seven collaborative groups who will be receiving funding from the Community Partnership Research Program are:

Assistant Professor Sherry Fukuzawa of the department of anthropology at U of T Mississauga and the campus’s Indigenous Action Group will be working with the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation to support goals of truth and reconciliation.

Associate Professor Cara Krmpotich of the Faculty of Information will be expanding on an existing partnership with the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Cultures and the Chippewas of Rama, bringing together university, museum, and community-based researchers who are working to better acknowledge Indigenous knowledge practices within research on Indigenous heritage items held in museums.

Rebecca Renwick, a professor in the Faculty of Medicine’s department of occupational science and occupational therapy, and faculty co-lead Kelly Arbour-Nicitopoulos, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education, will be working with Special Olympics Ontario to study the relationship between belonging and inclusion in sport for people with intellectual disabilities.

David Brennan, an associate professor in the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, will be working with a number of organizations to find optimal ways of increasing access to care and services that will help to reduce the impact of HIV, mental health and substance use among gay and bisexual men.

Assistant Professor Shane McInerney of the Faculty of Medicine’s department of psychiatry will be partnering with the Whitefish River First Nation and Mnaamodzawin Health Services on the development of sustainable programs to reduce self-harm and suicide rates among young adults in those communities.
Associate Professor Kelly O’Brien of the Faculty of Medicine’s department of physical therapy will work with Toronto organizations including Casey House, the Toronto People with AIDS Foundation and the Regent Park Community Health Centre to evaluate the implementation of a novel physical therapy (PT) model of care while examining the use of a patient-reported measure of disability in the clinical community with people living with HIV.
David Roberts, assistant professor, teaching stream, of the department of geography and planning in the Faculty of Arts & Science, is partnering with Youth Employment Services and the Law Society of Ontario to map current GTA housing provisions for, and the everyday life of, unaccompanied and separated refugee minors, and to co-design alternative housing options.

U of T planning collaboration with community group in Thorncliffe Park featured in Maclean's

ullahnor — Wed, 15 Mar 2017 21:05:35 +0000

U of T planning collaboration with community group in Thorncliffe Park featured in Maclean's

ullahnor Wed, 03/15/2017 - 17:05

Cutline

Mosque in Thorncliffe Park. U of T master's students in planning worked with the Thorncliffe Park Women's Committee to help them with developing neighbourhood priorities for cultural, recreational and economic renewal (photo by Eric Parker via Flickr)

Topic

Community Partnership

Maclean's reports that universities are increasingly partnering with local residents and non-profit organizations in their communities. The magazine highlights a project where U of T master's students in planning worked with the Thorncliffe Park Women's Committee to assist them in publishing a booklet on neighbourhood priorities for cultural, recreational and economic renewal.

Read the Maclean's story

The magazine quotes U of T President Meric Gertler talking about how the success of U of T and the city are entwined.

“Everything we do using our intellectual resources and our energy from our students and faculty to make Toronto a better place ends up helping us,” he says. “When we go to recruit faculty from across Canada and around the world or when we go out to recruit students from across Canada and around the world, Toronto is a big part of our offer.”

The article mentions that U of T is considering a possible multidisciplinary “school for cities” to address complex urban issues. And that in 2015, U of T's Shauna Brail was appointed the presidential adviser on urban engagement to foster partnerships in the city.

Stephanie Cirnu, who will graduate this spring, says she and her classmates learned from listening to the community through workshops and interviews.

“I had always conceptualized urban planning and design as more of a technocratic exercise,” she says to the magazine. “I now see any design is the product of community participation in the process.”

Community Partnership

U of T Scarborough collaborates with local community centre on culturally relevant food security

Indigenous communities drive Connaught-funded research projects

Power in partnership: U of T initiative funds collaborative research between faculty and community organizations

U of T planning collaboration with community group in Thorncliffe Park featured in Maclean's

Read the Maclean's story

Read more about the Thorncliffe Park project