Community Builders Sparks of Courage and Understanding – Community-Based Evaluation Research, Manitoulin Island

Role: Co-Investigator

I am currently collaborating with a faculty member from the University of Toronto, Dr. Kathy Bickmore, to conduct an evaluative community-based research study in three Manitoulin Island and North Shore (Ontario) schools on First Nations Reserves. We have partnered with an organization, Community Builders, that is implementing programming at these schools designed to equip students with leadership skills to address racism, sexism, and other bias (oppression) issues in their community. The goal is to understand how to better equip young people and educators to reflect upon and strengthen their understanding of relationships between Indigenous peoples and settlers in the Manitoulin and North Shore communities. The research aims to understand how the tools and strategies may support or intersect with the education these schools may be offering or believe they need, and how it may contribute to participants’ understandings and capabilities. This school-based study will focus on a school-selected group of Community Builders student leaders (ages 10-12).  Through a series of activities that engage with the schools and their respective communities over the course of the 2019-2021 school years. the research will examine issues of inter-group bridge-building, student leaders’ lived experiences, and existing curriculum practices—particularly in relation to how the representation of indigenous peoples, and indigenous-settler relations, in the official Ontario curriculum guidelines for junior grades social studies. Few studies have explored how young people have experienced the implemented curriculum’s representation of Indigenous-settler relations. This study explores this question—for its own sake, and as a way to understand the potential impact and implications of the programming implemented by the Community Builders NGO in these schools.