by Eden Suh, CFICE Volunteer
A volunteer chats with conference delegates at C2UExpo 2015.
The national community-campus engagement (CCE) movement in Canada has exciting plans for the beginning of May. Simon Fraser University (SFU), located in Vancouver, will be hosting C2UEXPO 2017 from May 1st to May 5th.
C2UEXPO is an event held every two years in varying provinces of Canada where the impact of community-campus partnerships are discussed. Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE), along with other community-based networks such as Community Based Research Canada (CBRC), will be attending C2UExpo in a collaborative effort to bring about positive change through research and learning.
C2UEXPO 2017 has been running since 2003 when it was first held in Saskatoon. Now it has expanded as a national forum to engage communities, universities, colleges, government, and non-profit organizations in a discussion of societal issues and environmental challenges that Canada is currently facing. The event brings many strategies and perspectives into addressing social challenges as community-campus partnerships across Canada gather in one place to further the national CCE movement.
Maeve Lydon, Community Co-lead of the Aligning Institutions for Community Impact working group.
Maeve Lydon, CFICE’s Community Co-Lead for the Aligning Institutions for Community Impacts (AICI) Working Group, has expressed strong enthusiasm for the opportunities this year’s C2UEXPO has to offer. Lydon, along with other members of the CFICE research team, plan to engage the national CCE movement with strategies based off an 11 point action plan created by Ted Jackson, a retired Carleton University Professor and the original Principal Investigator of CFICE. The action plan is titled “Accelerating Change: Policy Innovation through and for Community-Campus Engagement,” and its aim is to speed up the integration of policy changes in regards to CCE in Canada. Lydon hopes to discuss this plan leading at this year’s C2UEXPO.
Lydon claims that 2017 is perfect timing to serve as a major catalyst for the CCE movement. “[The year] 2017 is not only Canada’s 150th Anniversary but there is increasing local, national and global momentum for increasing higher education’s role in public engagement.”
Conference attendees discuss community-based research at C2UExpo 2015.
Lydon has been a part of the C2UEXPO movement since 2008 at University of Victoria. In her role with CFICE, she plans to build off her C2UExpo experiences to, “help galvanize energy and scale up the national CCE movement and develop a national community of practice and collaboration.”
“CFICE wants to take an asset-based approach to developing this and will therefore acknowledge and affirm the existing networks and initiatives of other networks such as CBRC, Research Impact Canada, the UNESCO Chair for CBR and Social Responsibility in Higher Education and the Canadian Association for Community Service Learning,” says Lydon.
Attendees used lego to build a visual representation of the C2UExpo 2015 community. ©Chris Roussakis, Carleton University 2015
According to Lydon, C2UEXPO 2017 is a great learning opportunity for CFICE. As she explains, it allows for an easy and effective networking space to connect with different campus and community activists. “Innovators in this CCE work will be able to help build our work and connections to fulfill the objectives of our CFICE project. The goal is to grow CFICE into a broader connected collaborative beyond 2019.”
For more information, or to register, please visit C2UExpo 2017’s website.