Members’ Public Engagement Fund

UNB’s School of Leadership studies held three in-person workshops during IDW to engage high school students and youth participants on community development, concepts of power, inclusion, and collaboration. Approximately 67 students attended each session to discuss and reflect on engagement.

Dalhousie University’s Agricultural Campus partnered with the Colchester Food Network to host a community cooking event celebrating global cultures and food security. Framed around SDG 2: Zero Hunger, the event emphasized cooperation across local and international levels by linking Dalhousie Agricultural Campus’s global food security work with the food bank’s local efforts. Over 60 participants attended, sharing food, cultural knowledge, and conversations that highlighted community connection and inclusion. The event fostered public awareness of global development themes, with a focus on food insecurity, demonstrating how local partnerships can strengthen international solidarity and act as an entry point to engage the public on global issues.

This panel conversation brought community groups together to discuss the gender-based violence that some temporary foreign workers may face while working in PEI, compounding factors that exacerbate the situation, and what some potential solutions could be. Attended by 40 individuals from the nonprofit sector, government, and the general public, the event created space to discuss structural inequalities in the temporary work permit system, global migration systems, including credible reports of workplace abuse and precarity.

The Coady Institute, a leadership education and collective action organization, hosted their Pathy Fellows, young Canadian leaders who participate in a year-long community development fellowship, in a virtual discussion of their work across the world. The audience of 66 people heard about the Fellows’ environmental and feminist work in Pakistan, Nigeria, and West Africa.

This one-day bootcamp led 16 non-profit workers through Design Thinking, an approach that uses a human-centered approach to problem-solving, to work through the challenges of the non-profit sector. Through immersive learning, participants left feeling empowered to apply the tools and knowledge from the bootcamp into their organization’s work.

This unique event profiled young, African Nova Scotian artists and highlighted their positive role in establishing community linkages and developing inclusive, safer, and sustainable communities in Canada and overseas. The event showcased African Nova Scotian musicians and artists while also providing an opportunity for international cooperation-themed networking for over 200 attendees.

This project centred on a book launch and development of educational videos for schools in PEI and twinned schools in Kenya. The book “Broken Crayons” tells the story of a pre-service teacher whose experience at a Kenyan school challenged her assumptions and led to global connections.