Winnipeg experience offers window on revitalization
Work in Winnipeg community among projects showcased at Regina conference
Two decades ago, the people who lived in Lord Selkirk Park in north Winnipeg called it a “war zone.” Half of the homes were vacant and boarded up.
Today, there’s a waiting list to live in the public housing complex because of all the positive services being offered around it.
“The adult learning centre that offers Grade 12 has graduated 95 people since starting in 2007. The literacy program is full and has a wait list. The child-care centre is thriving … it’s a safe community now. There is a strong sense of community there,” said Jim Silver, a professor of urban and inner-city studies at the University of Winnipeg.
At Regina’s mâmawêyatitân centre on Monday, as part of a threeday conference hosted by the University of Regina Community Research Unit (CRU), Silver will discuss his community-based work.
As a researcher, Silver partnered with a community organization called the North End Community Renewal Corporation to help address issues of poverty, gang activity and racism.
“We started off by listening, reaching out to people in the community, trying to develop relationships with them, earning their trust and listening to them to find out from them what they saw to be the problems and what they saw to be the solutions,” said Silver.
Then they approached the provincial government for funding to make it happen.
“Community-based research, it flips the whole traditional kind of research on its head,” said Lynn Gidluck, co-ordinator of the CRU.
“It’s grassroots-initiated. The problems come forward from people that are needing the services or are providing them. So when they approach the university to do research, it’s done in partnership.”
Relocating Silver’s university department to the neighbourhood, the university is helping support the Community Education Development Association’s unique educational facility.
The Winnipeg locale includes an after-school program where students can be tutored and mentored, learn about Indigenous cultures and get a hot supper for free. Similar programming is offered at the mâmawêyatitân centre in Regina, which Gidluck calls “a true example of community development at its best.”
“The high school students are coming into a university space. They look at the university students and they see that about half of them look like them — they’re Indigenous, they’re newcomers, they grew up in the low-income inner city in the north end,” said Silver. “So it kind of normalizes the idea of graduating high school and moving on to post-secondary.
“It’s starting to work. Graduation rates are starting to go up,” added Silver. Previously, about 25 per cent of students graduated from north-end schools.
The CRU’S summer institute (The Change Makers: Tools, Techniques and Strategies for Community-based Research) begins Monday at the university and is already sold out.
Approximately 120 people from non-profit and government organizations will collaborate with academics to discuss communitybased work.
Gidluck said there will be representatives from organizations like the Saskatchewan Seniors Mechanism, All Nations Hope Network, the RCMP Heritage Centre and the Alzheimer Society of Saskatchewan, among many others.
It’s a diverse group, and Gidluck sees this three-day event as a first step to get a conversation going.
“I’m excited hopefully about some of the collaborations that might come from this. And just bringing people together that are all interested in making our community better is kind of exciting,” said Gidluck.
Silver’s free public lecture is on Monday at mâmawêyatitân centre. The opening reception is at 6:30 p.m., with the lecture starting at 7 p.m.