Maeve Lydon is the Community Co-Lead for the Community-Campus Engage Canada (CCEC) working group. The working group focuses on three main projects: developing a community-first classification system to support community-campus engagement (CCE) practitioners, establishing a CCE national network to improve capacity building, and creating funding policies and practices. A main focus for 2018-2019 is coordinating national and regional roundtables as well as infrastructure planning in order to build on the work and legacy of CFICE.
Maeve lives and plays on the traditional territories of the Lekwungen First Nations known as Victoria, British Columbia situated on Vancouver Island in Canada’s west coast. She is the daughter of parents from Galway, Ireland and the mom of two grown sons. Possibly due to her Irish parents, Maeve continues to bridge her long-time passion as a volunteer, board and staff member focused on community organizing and social movement-building while bringing humour, fun, collective action and creativity in her work.
Maeve works with the University of Victoria (UVic) andd other campuses as well as multi-sector groups and networks on community-based research, community mapping, capacity-building and partnership projects that are dedicated to sustainability, student and community engagement and empowerment, institutional accountability, and public policy. After serving 20 years as a non-profit program and centre coordinator focused on international development, human rights and sustainability, Maeve started working in the community-campus space, co-founding and serving as both the program and partnership lead (Associate Director) of the University of Victoria’s Office of Community Based Research and Institute for Studies and Innovation in Community-University Engagement from 2007-2016 and the secretariat staff coordinator for Community Based Research Canada. Maeve is also on the International Advisory for Green Map and the past Chair of the UVic Environmental Law Centre, which connects student research with community requests for environmental justice, law reform and litigation, and Indigenous rights.
Interests: Community engagement, development and educational processes, participatory governance, sustainability and human rights. Food security, affordable housing, Biking, running, travelling!