Date/Time
Date(s) - 15/10/2018 - 27/10/2018
12:00 am
Location
University of Victoria
Categories No Categories
University of Victoria (UViC) and Surrey Fraser University (SFU), Canada
15-27 October 2018
The second cohort of the Mentor Training Programme (MTP) under the K4C initiative was organised at University of Victoria (UViC) and Surrey Fraser University (SFU), Canada from 15-27 October 2018. It was attended by 12 mentors from 5 hubs spread over 4 countries (India, Canada, Cuba and Malaysia). The two-week residency was split between a first week at UViC and the second week at SFU, which provided different learning opportunities to the mentors. The learning objectives of the residency were:
- Assess and improve competencies of mentors as facilitators.
- Introduction to Indigenous research methods.
- Design and use arts-based methods like community mapping, theatre, poetry, world café, indigenous research methods, etc.
- Gather inputs on facilitating teaching of CBPR.
- Review progress of field study and its outputs.
- Designing K4C hubs and support network for K4C.
The residency began with the welcome reception at Hotel Chateau Victoria in which all the mentors got the opportunity to get to know each other. Dr Rajesh Tandon and Prof. Budd Hall gave an overview of the work of the Chair and K4C Hubs to the mentors and other dignitaries.
The formal residency began on 15 October at UViC, with a session by an Elder and Prof Lorna Williams, who spoke of the role of Indigenous knowledge in contemporary times. During the rest of the first week, mentors learned various arts based participatory research methods, workshops on community mapping, and poetry. Through these sessions mentors learnt methods of inquiry in CBR, which they were not familiar with. Mentors also got an opportunity to practice the methods in field visits to various organisations working for the rights of people and dealing with various issues of exclusion through CBR approach. Prof Darleen Clover (Arts Based Research), Crystal Tremblay (Participatory Video), Lauren Jerke (theatre as mode of CBR), Prof Monica Prendergast (poetry as mode of CBR), Maeve Lydon (Community Mapping) and Prof Catherine Etmanski (Insights in teaching CBPR) helped the mentors in practicing the methods.
Achieving SDGs from the CBR lens is a major area of advocacy in K4C. The World Café driven by the mentors with support of Victoria Foundation and UViC gave them a wider understanding of the use of CBR.
The second week of the residency at SFU, Surrey was largely organised around developing the field research studies of each mentor, initiating robust K4C Hubs and CBPR courses, and the ethics of CBR. It was also an opportunity to listen to talks given by Shaheen Nanji, Director, International Community Engagement, SFU and Peter Keller, VP, Academic, SFU.