CFICE (Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement) Community Food Security Hub
What is CFICE?
CFICE is an action research project aimed at strenghtening Canadian communities by asking the question: How can community campus partnerships be designed and implemented to maximize the value created for non-profit, community-based organizations? Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the CFICE research project aims to strengthen Canadian non-profits, universities, colleges and funding agencies to build more successful, innovative, resilient and prosperous communities. CFICE is co-managed by Carleton University and the Alliance for Community-Service Learning. The program was launched in 2012 and will receive $2.5 million over seven years across five hubs, of which the Community Food Security Hub is one. To learn more about the broader CFICE project, visit the Carleton University website dedicated to the project.
CFICE Community Food Security Hub
The CFICE Community Food Security Hub is a collaboration between Carleton University, Food Secure Canada and many community partners. The overall research goal of the CFS hub is to try to make sense of the many models that currently exist and to articulate “best practices” in the areas of community-engaged teaching and community-based research in the context of furthering community food security in Canada. In keeping with the "community first" mandate of CFICE, the hub takes its cues from its core partner, Food Secure Canada, as the national convener of the Canadian food movement. A central goal of the CFS hub will be to provide core support for a network of community-campus partnerships that intersect with FSC's other program areas.
During the first phase of the CFICE project, each year will be characterized by a cohort of community-based demonstration projects. To read more about the overall Community Food Security Hub, download this overview document. From 2012 through 2015, small grants (up to $5000) were awarded to community-academic collaborations that will evaluate their work together (as part of CFICE project). By studying these research projects we hope to determine some models of how we can best work across sectors to improve research and its positive impacts on our communities.The demonstration projects are linked below by cohort year.
CFICE Community Food Security Hub Newsletters
The CFS Newsletters are used to highlight the activities of the Hub, and of our project partners. Issue 1, 2014 can be downloaded here. Issue 2, 2015 can be downloaded here.
Resources
The CFICE CFS Hub engages innovative community initiatives and their academic collaborators across the country. The results of these collaborations are captured in webinars. To peruse and view the archived webinars, click here. Additional documents and resources are available here.
