Community Engagement

Two U of T faculties join forces to boost mental and physical health of local seniors

siddiq22 — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 16:45:47 +0000

Two U of T faculties join forces to boost mental and physical health of local seniors

siddiq22 Fri, 07/28/2023 - 12:45

Cutline

Participants in the Work it Out, Talk it Out program, jointly created and run by U of T social work and kinesiology professors and students, stretch in their chairs at the Jane/Finch Centre (photo courtesy Work it Out, Talk it Out)

Bruce Grierson

Topic

Our Community

Community Engagement

Counselling

Exercise

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Mental Health

Subheadline

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education partner with community centre

Two University of Toronto faculties are teaming up on a new pilot project that aims to improve the physical and mental health of local seniors through a combination of exercise and talk therapy.

Partnering with the Jane/Finch Centre in northwest Toronto – a multi-service community centre focusing on poverty reduction – the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education developed the Talk It Out, Work It Out program for the centre’s clients, particularly seniors.

Graduate students from each faculty also contributed to the program’s curriculum.

Kinesiology students focused on the “Work It Out” section of the program, where participants do some basic exercise before moving on to the “Talk It Out” part, where trained Master of Social Work students shepherd the clients into small groups so they can share their thoughts and concerns to the degree and depth they choose.

Over seven 1.5-hour sessions, the participants’ anxieties are soothed and their comfort level rises through the combination of physical stress release and expert peer support.

Catherine Sabiston and Lin Fang

“We planned it this way so that seniors could first get activated through exercise,” says Lin Fang, associate professor of social work and Factor-Inwentash Chair in Children’s Mental Health at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.

“Later on, as seniors were used to the Talk It Out section and needed more time for it, we switched it around so that they could have time to speak first. The program was designed to be fully integrated.”

The Talk It Out program was inspired by the growing mental health crisis during the pandemic, which hit marginalized communities hard.

Social work students were trained to provide free counselling sessions online or by phone, but Fang knew some seniors would remain resistant to the idea of counselling – even if it was free.

So she joined forces with Catherine Sabiston, a professor of exercise and sport psychology at the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education who holds a Canada Research Chair in physical activity and mental health. Sabiston had led a similar initiative called MoveU.HappyU – an exercise and mental-health coaching program overseen by KPE students from her lab to help U of T students.

Both sets of graduate students partnered on adapting their programming to meet the needs of the senior clients Fang had in mind.

They’ve since seen real progress during the sessions at the Jane/Finch Centre, where many of the seniors initially lamented the lack of social support in their lives. Not only do they now have the support of the Talk It Out, Work It Out facilitators, but participants have been coming together themselves – making new walking buddies and friendships beyond the sessions.

“That’s the best part of ‘talking it out,’” says Jane/Finch Centre program worker Sandra Anderson.

“Everyone has a story. Your story reflects what you’re going through, but I can identify with it, too. By talking, we’ve helped each other make it through another day.”

Read the full story at the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Read the full story at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

U of T Scarborough collaborates with local community centre on culturally relevant food security

siddiq22 — Wed, 24 May 2023 13:59:36 +0000

U of T Scarborough collaborates with local community centre on culturally relevant food security

siddiq22 Wed, 05/24/2023 - 09:59

Cutline

The Centre for Immigrant and Community Services in Scarborough is growing 26 kinds of vegetables in its greenhouse for use in its food bank (photo by Christopher Katsarov Luna)

Alexa Battler

Topic

Our Community

Community Engagement

Community Partnership

Food Security

Social Innovation

U of T Scarborough

Subheadline

The Centre for Immigrant and Community Services has been working with the Culinaria Research Centre to examine how the pandemic impacted food systems

In addition to the usual canned and dry goods available at their food bank, Scarborough's Centre for Immigrant and Community Services (CICS) also grows 26 different kinds of vegetables, served weekly to more than 200 families who visit the centre.

The CICS greenhouse and gardens produce about 1,700 pounds of food per year – all donated as part of the Sustainable and Accessible for Empowering Communities (SAFE) project.

Bush beans and Oregon sugar pod green peas are among the culturally relevant plants growing in the CICS greenhouse (photo by Christopher Katsarov Luna)

“We've seen more and more people that might have been just above the poverty line are now finding themselves below that line,” says Brian Joyce, director of community services and operations at CICS.

“We could see the needs of the populations we were observing – they needed access to food. And over the last year that's just amplified with high inflation and cost of food.”

In 2020, CICS opened a pop-up food bank, teaming up with the Feeding City Lab, a research network of the Culinaria Research Centre at U of Toronto Scarborough that investigates how the pandemic impacted food systems.

The lab surveyed community members and found many were lacking vegetables to make their own cultural dishes. That data helped CICS secure funding for its greenhouse, and identified which vegetables were most needed.

“It's not just about food security, but it's about food sovereignty. People are taking charge of how they want their food systems to work. They are bringing their ethnocultural lens to it as well,” says Jo Sharma, an associate professor of historical and cultural studies at the Culinaria Research Centre and director of the Feeding City Lab who is cross-appointed to the department for the study of religion and the Asian Institute.

The greenhouse and raised garden beds at CICS (photo by Christopher Katsarov Luna)

Siobhan Bonisteel, a PhD candidate in environmental science at U of T Scarborough and community partnership representative with the Feeding City Lab, is one of several researchers supporting CICS. She’s using her expertise on community food systems to help the CICS team gather data on the SAFE project’s impact on the food bank and wider community.

“Feeding City and CICS are understanding the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in real time,” Bonisteel says. “Both inform each other and work together to broaden our collective understanding of community food issues, including resiliency to threats such as pandemics.”

Joyce says the data will not only help entice funders, but will help illustrate the project as a model for other organizations. It will also guide which new plants the centre tries to grow, as families accessing the food bank represent a range of cultural backgrounds.

“We're serving a wide variety of different people and we're introducing them to all these other services at CICS – like settlement services, early years programming and fitness programming that they might not have known about,” Joyce says.

The SAFE project also encompasses the centre’s industrial-sized community kitchen, which is used for cooking courses and as a place to share knowledge and build community.

The gardens are similarly a place for connection, and Joyce wants to bring in many other local organizations to collaborate. For example, the South Asian Cultural and Health Association for Youth and Seniors is planting ethno-culturally significant plants for diasporic Asian community members in CICS's raised garden beds.

Austin Boyne, a facilitator at the CICS urban farm, tends to the plants in the greenhouse
(photo by Christopher Katsarov Luna)

Shathvahi Ramesh, a fourth-year undergraduate student studying environmental ethics and religion in the Faculty of Arts and Science and a former intern with Sharma’s team, worked with the Feeding City Lab to connect CICS with the Malvern Urban Farm, which grows culturally significant plants in one of Scarborough’s hydro fields. Community farmers are growing seeds in the greenhouse to later transfer them to their gardens.

Ramesh says community organizations are often in an ideal position to help one another – but just might not know it. U of T Scarborough alumna Amanda Wedge has recently taken over as the co-ordinator for the Scarborough Food Network, which aims to bring a range of local organizations and stakeholders (including the Feeding City Lab) together, with monthly meetings dedicated to updates.

“It helps folks feel like they're not one lone entity just fighting their own fight or alone in their work. Together is always better,” Ramesh says. "It also helps build institutional memory.”

Add new story tags

Culinaria Research Centre; Feeding City Lab

U of T Scarborough launches new centre for music and community engagement

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 23 May 2023 15:55:01 +0000

U of T Scarborough launches new centre for music and community engagement

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 05/23/2023 - 11:55

Cutline

A new music centre at U of T Scarborough recently hosted its first symposium (photo by Alexa Battler)

Topic

Subheadline

SoundLife Scarborough will collaborate with local community groups on ways to remove barriers to making music

A new centre launched by the music and culture program at the University of Toronto Scarborough is removing barriers to making music – and not just for students.

Called SoundLife Scarborough (SLS), the research centre is teaming up with local organizations to create more opportunities for music-making on and off campus.

“The centre supports community partnerships and community-engaged research excellence grounded in the principle of reciprocity,” says Laura Risk, SLS co-lead and an assistant professor in U of T Scarborough’s department of arts, culture and media. “We're trying to help facilitate connections and really think about how we can contribute to the already vibrant musical world in Scarborough.”

SLS co-lead Laura Risk and symposium attendees participated in a session that traced the history of the steelpan (photo by Alexa Battler)

SLS faculty member Roger Mantie calls the centre “the glue” that will hold together the music and culture program’s partnerships, initiatives, research projects and programming. Professors in the program have frequently engaged local organizations as part of their courses and research, but the centre will allow U of T Scarborough to maintain and build these relationships beyond individual courses or projects, he says.

“Now we have a hub that can create stability and sustainability,” says Mantie, an associate professor in the department of arts, culture and media. “And organizations have a point of contact beyond a singular faculty member.”

The centre will find new ways to use the university’s resources and strengths to support those pursuing their love of music. Risk says new partnerships and programming will begin with the question: “What’s in it for the community?”

“SLS is meant to be a very porous interface between the university and the community,” says Lynn Tucker, SLS lead and associate professor, teaching stream, in the department of arts, culture and media.

SLS co-lead Lynn Tucker (left) and community members got hands-on at the Mapping Music Pathways symposium (photo by Alexa Battler)

All programming is meant be free and accessible. It already includes pop-up and weekly music-making events for hand-drumming and ukulele, along with Brazilian Maracatu sessions with Juno-nominated master percussionist Aline Morales.

“The age range for some of those Maracatu sessions is eight to 80,” says Tucker. “We have families coming in with their kids. We've had people come in for date night. People drive up from downtown on a Thursday evening to attend.”

Music program marching to a new beat

SLS is just one of the ways the program is rethinking the ways music is studied at university. Students don’t have to audition to get into the program, and any student can join its bands, choirs, string orchestra and small ensembles – no matter their course load or field of study. The program evolved in response to students’ interests and goals. In 2015, it adopted three new areas of focus that guided what would be taught and who would teach it: community music, music and society, and music creativity and technology.

“The main thing that differentiates it from almost every other university music program in Canada is that there's no audition to get in. Different and diverse musical backgrounds are celebrated in the curriculum and you get people from all walks of life,” says SLS research associate Lloyd McArton, a PhD candidate in U of T’s Faculty of Music who is an assistant professor of music education at the University of Lethbridge. “The focuses are really special – music and technology isn't really prominent in a lot of music programs in Canada.”

SLS research associate Lloyd McArton was one of several symposium attendees to try out the steelpan (photo by Alexa Battler)

The refocusing involved four new staff hires and several new courses, including ones on DJ cultures and digital music creation, as well as others that explore music’s intersection with health, movies, society and technologies. A suite of courses dedicated to community music were also introduced so students could observe and interact with local organizations’ music programming.

One of the community music courses’ culminating projects is to write a mock grant proposal for a new community music project in collaboration with an existing organization and then pitch the idea to the class and community partners. Fourth-year student and SLS research assistant Delicia Raveenthrarajan had previously acted as a teaching-artist-in-choir with Sistema Toronto, a free music program for students in underserved communities –so she proposed a new staff role dedicated to community engagement. The organization has since used her proposal to inform their systems and practices.

“It was really cool because I got to interact with them through my studies and in my professional life,” says Raveenthrarajan, who is double majoring in music and culture and mental health studies. “It's important to de-centre the university at some points so we’re going out into the community and amplifying the voices of community partners.”