Connecting people, ideas, and resources to strengthen community-campus relationships
Community Campus Engage Canada (CCECanada) is a national network and community of practice that fuels authentic research, learning, and creative partnerships between academic institutions and community organizations. We support community-driven efforts that enhance educational experiences for students and create real social impact.
Through our many activities, we bring participants in community-campus partnerships together to exchange promising practices and better understand each other across regions, sectors, and academic disciplines. We provide a national advocacy voice and build capacity for community engagement professionals, engaged faculty and students, and community partners.
Building on the momentum of the CFICE project
CCECanada is a living legacy of Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE), a seven-year (2012-2019) action research project based at Carleton University and core funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Grant. CFICE aimed to answer the question: How can community-campus partnerships be designed and implemented to maximize the value created for non-profit, community-based organizations?
Within CFICE, community-based, academic, and boundary spanning practitioners worked together on multi-scale demonstration projects that addressed critical social and environmental issues across varied sectors including poverty reduction, community environmental sustainability, food security/sovereignty, and violence against women. During the last three years of the project, several working groups were formed to mobilize what was learned from demonstration projects to influence policies, practices, and systems that achieve more effective, value-generating community-campus engagement.