Values and Principles

These values and principles were put forward as part of SFU's Strategic Community Engagement Plan to support and help align community engagement at SFU.

Inclusion and diversity

We practice deep respect for culture, language and history, personally and institutionally at all scales, from internationalization to local knowledge; and we foster the interconnections among diverse knowledge systems, traditional, personal, formal and informal.

Mutual trust, respect and accountability

We commit to transparency, shared purpose, shared ownership, and shared accountability in our work; we build measurement, evaluation and reflective practices into our collaborations for collective impact.

Sustainable approaches

We design for complexity and the long term; we approach activities through a systems lens, focusing on process as well as outcome, resourcing for implementation and sustainment, and recognizing our personal agency as well as our institutional footprint.

Healthy relationships

We care about our relationships, from personal to institutional. We are flexible and adaptable; we live our values in all stages of our partnerships.

Equity

We recognize power relations in university-community relationships and enable equitable partnerships; we listen; we create and respect space for people to speak for themselves, in their own voices.

Knowledge creation

We enable community engagement as a method for teaching, learning, research and creative activity, and we work with community to co-create and cultivate knowledge and understanding for the purpose of achieving positive social change.