2acces.org - ACCES - Other partnerships : Other academic-community partnerships or participatory research projects

Other Partnerships

Other academic-community partnerships or participatory research projects

School of Environment, McGill University
The McGill School of Environment offers an Environmental Research Course where senior year students work in an interdisciplinary team on a real-world research project involving problem definition, methodology development, social, ethical and environmental impact assessment, execution of the study, and dissemination of results to the research community and to the people affected. They have established partnerships with Montreal’s Eco-Initiatives, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Sustainable Forestry and Certification Watch and many other NGOs. You can see the research projects that these students have carried out at www.mse-research.mcgill.ca. If you are interested in knowing more about this initiative you may contact Pete Berry at: pete.barry@mcgill.ca or visit the MSEís web site at: http://www.mcgill.ca/mse/

Geography Department, McGill University
McGill’s Geography Department offers an advanced undergraduate or graduate course in Environmental Decisions. This course deals with the role of geographic information, paradigms and modes of analysis- including but not restricted to GIS- in environmental impact assessment and decision-making. The focus is on community-based decision making, particularly where conservation issues are involved. Students involved in this course are asked to form research teams and carry out a “hands-on” project associated with research needs of a community. Students actively participate in developing and using environmental information in a community decision exercise. This may involve the use of a GIS and decision-support software. For more details on this course please see: http://www.geog.mcgill.ca/courses/551A.html

Urban Ecology Centre - McGill University
The Urban Ecology Centre's (UEC) partnership projects have been with two schools at McGill University: the School of Urban Planning and the School of Environment. In each case, a group of students at the senior level approached the UEC expressing an interest in developing a semester-long research project. Together they defined the project. A member of the UEC staff met with the group throughout the course of the semester. The role of the UEC person was to make comments, especially related to the community aspect of the research, to make corrections or modifications. The students submitted their draft report to the UEC for comments; UEC members attended the students' presentation at the School and the UEC received a copy of the final report. The projects carried out in partnership have been:

1.- The possibility of establishing a municipal by-law forbidding the use of genetically modified goods in all municipal institutions. This project worked closely with Greenpeace.
2.- The issues involved in creating an Urban plan for Montreal respecting the requirements of sustainable development.
3.- The possibility of establishing a car-free street on Mont-Royal Avenue in the Plateau area. This project worked closely with a citizen's group.

http://www.urbanecology.net/UEC/indexuec.html
http://www.mcgill.ca/urbanplanning/
http://www.mcgill.ca/mse/

Communiterre (formerly Eco-Initiatives) - Four Montreal Universities (McGill, Concordia, Université de Montréal and UQAM)
Communiterre is a non-profit organization that seeks to build community, contribute to local food security, and expand access to healthy produce through collective gardening and other agriculture projects. Through their actions they are committed to fostering awareness of the need for community-based, environmentally-sound, non profit production and distribution.
Communiterre has benefited from several community-academic partnerships since the beginning of its urban agriculture programming in 1997.

1998: a neighbourhood food security mapping project carried out by a group of students in McGill University’s Urban planning program.
1999: an independent research project entitled “Land access for socially-driven community gardens“ carried out by students in a McGill Environmental Studies course
2000: an independent study entitled “Community opposition to environmental projects”, carried out by a geography student at McGill University.
2002: 2 groups of 7 students carried out research projects as part of their program within McGill’s School of the Environment. One group prepared a report entitled “Brownfield Remediation: Solutions for Urban Agriculture”. The other carried out initial research on the market potential of organic, heritage-variety seedlings, for the benefit of Communiterre’s community greenhouse project. http://www.mse-research.mcgill.ca/envr401_2002/brownfields/index.html
http://www.mse-research.mcgill.ca/envr401_2002/greenhouse
2003-2003: a group of 5 MBA students from McGill developed a business plan for Communiterre’s community greenhouse project.
2002 and 2003: internships carried out by students in Concordia University’s Community Economic Development graduate diploma program (School of Community and Public Affairs) helped to develop a community greenhouse project, in particular by researching similar initiatives across North America and by evaluating the social feasibility of the project in NDG.
2003: a stagiaire from UQAM’s DESS (graduate diploma) in Planification territoriale et développement local (département de géographie) carried out an eight-week internship jointly supervised by Communiterre and the NDG Food Security Coalition. The intern assisted with data collection and analysis for the Coalition’s food security monitoring project, and carried out some preliminary community assessment research for a new collective garden development project in one distrivt of NDG.
2003-2004: a new partnership is currently beginning with l’Université de Montréal’s Chaire Approche communautaire et inégalités de santé. This partnership allows a resource person from the Chaire to accompany Communiterre and an academic advisory committee (professors from McGill University and Concordia University) in the development of a proposal for community-based research, concerning itself broadly with our organization's negotiation of the “socio-sanitary interface” between the community and institutional sectors.

McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women - Montreal South Asian Women’s Community Centre
Women from South Asia constitute one of the largest groups of recent in-land refugee claimants in Canada. However, according to South Asian community and refugee support workers, many of these women are struggling with common patterns of difficulty in their experiences with the Canadian refugee system. Women who find themselves in this situation often navigate between dire political or economic circumstances, incomprehension of the refugee system, and bad advice, intimidation and extortion from “agents” ‚ who for a sum provide the means of travel ‚ and unregulated legal consultants in Canada. This process begins within countries of origin, but often spirals during transit, and persists after arrival in Canada. “Uncovering the Exploitation Trail: Women Refugees from South Asia” is a partner project between the McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women and the Montreal South Asian Women’s Community Centre. The objective of the project is to probe deeper into the experiences of South Asian women asylum seekers in Quebec, with a view to identifying patterns therein, and producing resource materials that community workers and women asylum seekers themselves can use to address the challenges they face. The project aims also to produce a policy report, recommendations and an academic paper out of the findings.
http://www.mcgill.ca/mcrtw/

Sustainable Toronto
www.sustainabletoronto.ca

TOP