CREATING VITAL SOLUTIONS
CREATING VITAL SOLUTIONS
Creating Vital Solutions was conceived of as space for creative collaborations between Sheridan and our community; wherein the talents of our school could be accessed and applied in the service of Non-profit and charity-led initiatives. To support this work, Drs. Michael McNamara and Sara Cumming procured a 3-year SSHRC grant ($174,000/3 years). This grant enabled a collaboration between our research team, the Oakville Community Foundation, Halton Region, and the Oakville YMCA, United Way of Hamilton and Halton, Community Development Halton, the Halton Poverty Roundtable and Food for Life. The ensuing suite of projects leveraged Sheridan’s social science research capabilities, its creative spaces, and its creative problem-solving methodologies to support community efforts to implement a more participatory and creative decision-making approach to philanthropic funding.
In addition to providing important qualitative and quantitative data on key issues related to Affordable Housing, Food Insecurity, Employment Support, and Wrap-Around programming, the CIF team facilitated a series of “creative problem-solving” workshops wherein neighbours (users of community services) and front-line community workers came together to design “fundable solutions” to advance social good in these key areas. The CIF 1.0 yielded new insights about the lived experiences of individuals accessing this services and culminated with the Philanthropitch event in 2018; wherein the projects identified and designed by the participants were ‘pitched’ to Halton’s biggest philanthropists.
Three community development project ended up being funded. Beyond the immediate value of these specific projects, the legacy of Creating Vital Solutions was the adoption of a more participatory, bottom-up approach to charitable giving in Halton (see: McNamara, Cumming, and Pulis, 2018; included in the writing sample). Creating Vital Solutions resulted in numerous conference papers, 5 community reports, a journal article, a research award, and experiential learning opportunities for over 25 students.
