KFL&A Public Health
Project: Strategic Plan Support
Later this year, KFL&A Public Health will be entering the strategic planning process to provide direction to agency activities for the next 3-5 years. See here for the current plan that has now passed its end date. Stakeholder engagement is a key activity in the process, providing the perspectives of staff, senior leadership, Board of Health members and community partners on the agency’s vision, mission, values, and priority areas of action. Students could be involved in developing a planning framework for stakeholder engagement, developing data collection tools (survey, interview guide, etc.), conducting interviews, performing quantitative and qualitative data analysis, or writing reports.
Canadian Refugee Sponsorship Agreement Holders (SAH) Association
Project: Mapping Networks of SAH Support
Canada has a unique model of private refugee sponsorship that allows groups of citizens and/or permanent residents to sponsor named refugees from anywhere in the world to resettle in Canada. Most of this sponsorship takes place via organisations that hold an agreement with the federal government (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC)). These diverse agreement-holders range from small volunteer-run entities to large, international entities, representing humanitarian organisations, faith-based, ethnocultural communities and more.
The Canadian Refugee Sponsorship Agreement Holders (SAH) Association is the national umbrella for SAHs, providing a unified voice on private sponsorship policy issues, liaising with IRCC, managing the allocation of limited sponsorship spaces equitably among SAHs, and supporting the SAH community in their important work.
Within the SAH landscape, other support structures also exist, for example SAHs in southern Ontario connect regularly, and Catholic SAHs meet periodically. Other groups outside of the sponsorship community also provide support. In this project, we would like to map these support networks and support structures, with the goal of best supporting SAHs, without creating duplication, and ensuring that all SAHs have a support network to connect to.
ABLE2: Support for People with Disabilities
Project: Measuring the Social and Economic Impact On Seniors
ABLE2 supports people of all ages across the disability spectrum and their families to live life as valued members of their communities. We work with partners to provide the tools, choices and connections that empower people with disabilities to build lives of meaning and joy.
ABLE2's Matching Program believes that community connection is the way to ensure that seniors and people with disabilities and mental health challenges can live a good life, enrich their community and ensure social inclusion and well-being. ABLE2 matches volunteers in the community (Allies) with a person with a disability (Friend) in an intentional relationship. The impacts for the person with a disability when someone chooses to be in their life are profound: reduced loneliness and isolation, decreased vulnerability, slower cognitive decline, developing personal networks, access to resources and opportunities, increased self-confidence, and improved health (mental, physical, and social).
We are seeking support to better measure the social and economic impact the Matching Program has on seniors who participate in our programs. Improved evidence-based measurements will help us to create better programming and find more sources of funding. We request support to develop standardized questionnaires and/or use validated assessment tools to measure impact. Additionally, we request support to evaluate, score, analyze, and interpret the data collected.
Bangladeshi-Canadian Community Services (BCS)
Project: Understanding Impact, Increasing Community Engagement
Bangladeshi-Canadian Community Services (BCS) is a non-profit organization that has provided information, referrals, skill development and settlement services to diverse communities in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) since 2000. Services are adaptive to changing community needs and are delivered in partnership with other committees and service providers. BCS offer a wide range of programming to support youth, seniors, women/girls, and newcomers, as well as intergenerational programming. Programs and support include:
- health and recreational activities and initiatives (e.g., Women in STEM program, Youth Eliminates Smoking group, Summer Sports, After School Tutoring Program, Weekly Technology Sessions, and Health Education Workshops)
- opportunities for professional development, networking, and volunteerism
- needs-based employment and settlement counselling/referrals
- navigating legal procedures, health care settings, and more in Canada
- translation services
In addition, BCS conducts research to identify solutions to social challenges facing the community and to understand program impacts, helping them to better serve the community. BCS serves over 5000 beneficiaries, with the number increasing every year.
Our many programs and services operate within a limited budget and resources. This also means we face some challenges in program implementation and outreach to increase engagement and awareness of our services. We would like support from the PhD-Community Initiative to better map our programming and understand its impact. By better understanding the impact our programming has on the community we can:
- Better promote our activities to increase awareness of and engagement in our programs and services
- Better advocate for increased funding to support our operations
- Increase volunteer engagement to support our operations and our community overall
City of Kingston
Project: Local Early Learning & Child Care Market Needs Assessment
The City of Kingston is looking for support in the development of a local Early Learning and Child Care market needs assessment. The City of Kingston, as the consolidated municipal service manager (CMSM) for early learning and child care programs and services within the City of Kingston and the County of Frontenac, is looking for insights into the supply and demand for early years programs and services in the region, based on age structures, employment landscape and population shifts/projections, as well as better understanding staffing, capacity, and business support needs through engagement with local service providers.
Through a market needs assessment, the city would be looking to establish a baseline of the current supply and demand of early years and child care program and services, as we shift into the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) system. Through research of the federal program, the impacts of the provincial guidelines, local and comparable community promising practices, the city is looking for key insights to help inform future policy development. This foundational work will also support the development of an updated Early Learning and Child Care Service plan that will help shape program and service to meet the community's long-term needs.
Project: Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) model for the corporation of the City of Kingston
The City of Kingston is looking to identify how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) framework could be used by the City of Kingston corporation by exploring the experiences and best practices of the introduction of the SDGs at Queen’s University. By exploring the work that has happened and how it has shaped strategic planning at the university, the city is interested in a proposed framework on how the SDGs could be incorporated into city strategic plans and policy development to shape outcomes and monitor impact in the community. Research on promising practices in other comparable municipalities, as well as insight from community stakeholders would be beneficial in identifying key next steps.
By exploring how SGDs can help monitor and support internal evidence-informed planning, while also including strong alignment with community engagement to better understand local priorities, can create greater social impacts in the community. Through greater understanding of how SDGs could be used in a municipal context, key insights will inform a range of municipal strategies, policies, and council priorities by supporting evidence-informed decision making.