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Post-secondary community engagement programs prepare students for a new world

It’s a term that’s become ubiquitous, used by museums, schools, artists, educators, businesses and politicians: “community engagement.”

Organizations are discovering that the best way to foster change without controversy is to bring communities on side and work collaboratively toward collective goals.

As more non-profits, institutions and corporations require staff to incorporate community engagement principles, post-secondary schools such as McMaster University, Ryerson University and Wilfrid Laurier are launching degree and certificate programs in the field.

“I would hinge it on the new style of learning,” explains Mike Des Jardins, the supervisor of engagement for the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board. “The way you and I grew up involved rote learning. We had things on overheads that we copied down and regurgitated on a test. The focus now is on letting students take the lead in their learning. And that’s stronger learning because it’s connected to things that are actually going on in the community.”

The program at McMaster, which is offered partly in class and partly online, begins with a foundational course and then delves into areas such as grassroots governance, communication and conflict. The goal is to build a common language and best practices within the field, stemming from anti-oppression and anti-racism perspectives.

Des Jardins is among the first cohort of students to enroll in McMaster’s continuing education certificate in leadership and community engagement. 

At the school board, community organizations will make program pitches that are based on assumptions of what youth want to learn. Des Jardins wants to reverse that process, so they those community boards assume less and speak with youth first, find out what they need and then design an after-school program, for example, accordingly.

The certificate program is also about challenging notions of leadership as the remit of one person and instead focusing on inclusiveness and ongoing process.

“That’s a challenging thing for most people,” says Des Jardins. “You might need to look at yourself and put yourself behind other people instead of taking the lead on things.”

So far, students in the foundational course are employed by the city of Hamilton, the public library, the YMCA and Ontario Works. Each will have different constituents – and thus approaches – to engage and organize with.

“We’ve defined community engagement in a very broad way,” says Lorraine Carter, director of continuing education at McMaster. “I might, through my work in education, interact with communities of parents or neighbourhoods. If I work for the city, I might be going into those neighbourhoods and organizing.

“It starts at the top,” she adds. “Institutions can say we’re going to be active or we’re going to be activists, but there must be leadership that verbally and through ongoing behaviour supports and practises it.”

McMaster and other schools must balance keeping the courses flexible in the spirit of self-determined learning and offering students a common set of outcomes. However, it’s too early to know if the field will follow social work or accounting and become a certified profession.

“We need to do it a little bit more before we discover whether credentials would be a good goal to pursue,” says Carter.

kevinr@nowtoronto.com | @KevinRitchie

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