Community Project Grant winners

In partnership with Black Block Association (BBA), Delali’s project, titled Hire Black Youth Initiative, will facilitate greater access to career opportunities for Black youth in Vancouver. This will be accomplished by creating an online job matching platform with access to mentorship, skills training, and skills development mixers, in partnership with organizations that pledge to support the representation and empowerment of Black youth at individual and community scales.

Research has highlighted a lack of health literacy in newcomer demographics. This has been exacerbated by frequent changes to guidelines and restrictions seen throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Through this collaborative project with Pacific Immigrant Resources Society (PIRS), Emilie hopes to create a toolkit of healthcare resources, complete with workshops, infographics, and condensed pamphlets fully translated into multiple languages by volunteers from the UBC Vaccine Literacy Club (VLC) and professional translators. The project will also engage newcomer women to co-publish a vaccine literacy children’s book into 5 languages.

Men have the highest rates of death by suicide in Canada. Contributing risk factors include social disconnection, depression, trauma, loneliness, and harmful masculine norms associated with seeking emotional support. Despite this heightened risk, there is currently a lack of male-inclusive mental health response programs in Canada. This project is in partnership with the Canadian Centre for Men and Families Vancouver (CCMF-V), and aims to decrease suicide risk among men by building greater networks of social support within our communities.

In partnership with the Environmental Youth Alliance (EYA), Shogofa’s project addresses barriers to accessing Indigenous and community-based land stewardship training and learning opportunities for marginalized BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) youth in Vancouver’s downtown eastside. Through hands-on learning, this initiative aims to empower youth to explore land-based pedagogies and ecological stewardship.

The South Asian community in BC is facing a substance use and overdose crisis, particularly among young people. In response, Avneet is co-creating a workshop series for three high schools in the Lower Mainland. The project will facilitate four workshops over four weeks in each high school, focusing on introducing the issue of substance use and overdose in the South Asian community, overcoming stigma with empathy, advocacy, and leadership, and overdose response and prevention training.

Teachers and advisors make up 7% of the workforce in BC, and there has been little focus on improving working conditions to support their mental health. Carolina’s project hopes to bring the conceptualized “Wellness Pod'' to life, a space designed with biophilic principles in mind meant to maximize wellness recuperation throughout an educator’s day. The timelessness and scalability of the design will be complemented by the Human and Nature Youth Club‘s experience, resources networks. The vision for the Wellness Pod is for it to be a miniature greenhouse found within school grounds which provides conditions conducive for stress release and resilience building for users.

In partnership with the Nisga’a Valley Health Authority, Truman's project aims to facilitate the incorporation of Indigenous-led, traditional, and land-based physical activities within kinesiology exercise prescriptions normally delivered in primary care settings. By engaging with 4 Nisga’a communities through discussions and sharing circles, traditional and/or land-based physical activities will be identified and implemented in collaboration with community members.

The global textiles industry is one of the world's fastest-growing industries, and has been criticized for its human rights injustices and environmental impact. Hammad’s project creates a educational resources that  bring awareness to secondary school communities in Vancouver, BC, in hopes of inspiring action. These educational resources will include presentations and/or workshops which highlight unsustainable practices and human rights violations within fashion and retail industries, and demonstrates how to overcome societal pressures that inform consumption.

Each year, over 300,000 new immigrants from diverse sociocultural backgrounds relocate to Canada. Language barriers remain a significant obstacle to the provision of equitable healthcare among these communities. By partnering with S.U.C.C.E.S.S, Lynda is working to advance equitable healthcare in Canada by providing free healthcare translation services to immigrants, newcomers, and those with low English-language proficiency, through the Volentia Healthcare Translation initiative.