News and stories

Pooria Taheri and Taylor Boostma won an SFU Student-Community Engagement Competition Grand award in 2024 for their proposal to work in partnership with Vancouver Coastal Health, the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, and with local artists, to offer inclusive accessible art workshops to address social isolation and build community in the downtown east side of Vancouver. Their project continues to grow, and we are very grateful for their willingness to share some reflections about how the project has gone so far.

Featuring rich programs of community-engaged education, arts-based engagement, and technological innovation, this year’s winners are addressing food security, migrant history, cultural connection, intergenerational knowledge-keeping, gender-based violence, access to education, the toxic drug crisis, climate grief and hope, reconciliation, and homelessness.

With transphobia growing in Canada, non-binary people in this country are asking for policies to protect them in sport, but they have been continuously left out of the conversations that should inform these policies. That’s where Martha Gumprich’s project comes in.

When COVID-19 hit, we all realized the importance of having a local neighbourhood network. Many people experienced major changes in their lives, such as losing their income and social network, or losing access to activities that supported their overall well-being. As a Roots of Empathy instructor who was fortunate enough to have a strong network of support, Rita Lee started looking for more ways to be of service to those around her.

In 2022, Ritu Mehra, Harbir Dhaliwal, and Muskan Jammu partnered with local schools to start a breakfast program that incorporates fun education about healthy food choices. More than just a project, Let’s Do Breakfast was inspired by their own personal experiences and their desire to give back to the community.

When then-Simon Fraser University (SFU) student Saba Fatemi and her peers won the 2019 SFU Student Community Engagement Competition with their “CommuniCreate” initiative – a program for refugee and newcomer children pre-pandemic – she didn’t specifically have Ukrainian children in mind.

In 2020, BSc student Chloe Goodison started Naloxhome as a community engagement project providing overdose education and naloxone training to secondary students in the Tri-Cities area. Today, her project has helped not only those in Tri-Cities classrooms, but throughout Metro Vancouver.

SFU students and friends Muskan Jammu, Ritu Mehra, and Harbir Dhaliwal won a $2,000 grant in the Student-Community Engagement Competition and will be using it to address food security and improve nutritional education in their "Let's Do Breakfast" program for elementary students. Background photo: Freepik

FHS BSc first year student Puneet Chhina (second from left, inset) and her Finding Present team co-leads (left to right, inset) Anisha Biswas, Catherine Wong, and SFU Geography student Gabrielle Wong - won a $2,000 grant in the 2022 SFU Student-Community Engagement Competition. The team aims to host Crafting Circles for Langley, BC youth to provide access to art and mentorship, and build community and relationships.

Martha Gumprich (left inset) and Nicola Hare (right inset) from Kootenays-based health and community group, Trans Connect, will host two discussions to ask trans and non-binary youth what changes would help make sport more welcoming

Featuring community-engaged research, policy-targeted knowledge mobilization, equity-serving knowledge translation, and even Bertie, a breakfast banana mascot, this year’s winners of the SFU Student-Community Engagement Competition are bravely building community partnerships across BC in order to tackle challenging complex issues, like Islamophobia, food insecurity, health justice and more.

In early 2021, about a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, five students from SFU and UBC came together to persist in their passion for bringing STEM to young learners in Surrey. Delivering their program met with some challenges, but as with so much community engagement work, maintaining respectful communication with partners continues to allow them to engage in their passion for engaging young leaders and learners.

From art-based co-creation or engaging with schools, to community advocacy and meaningful acts of Reconciliation and more, the winners of this year’s SFU Student-Community Engagement Competition are putting ideas into action with their community partners.

Priscilla Lam and Angelica Tso won a $3,000 Grand Prize Award in the 2020-21 Student Community Engagement Competition for their idea to build an app that would incentivize widespread habit change around using disposable cups. After several months working with businesses in the Lower Mainland to bring their idea to life, they took some time to reflect on what the process has been like, offering some great advice: remember to learn and have fun – changemaking is an ongoing pursuit.

In 2018, the We Are the World project was awarded $3,000 to found a magazine to showcase seniors' stories of resilience. Three years later, we are pleased to share that the project is still moving forward, though with some changes.

Happy Halloween, SFU. While COVID-19 still means that our office can’t give out candy like we usually do, you can still trick-or-treat with us by registering and submitting your idea to the SFU Student-Community Engagement Competition.

NaloxHome is a youth-run team focusing on providing overdose education and naloxone training to secondary students in the Tri-Cities area (Coquitlam, Port Moody, and Port Coquitlam).

CommuniCreate helps newcomer and refugee youth in the Lower Mainland learn English. An award-winning project of the SFU Student-Community Engagement Competition, it was initially designed as a hands-on in-person learning experience.

A total of $28,000 has been awarded to fund ten student-led projects that exemplify the competition’s purpose and serve as shining examples of the creativity, vision, and community commitment of SFU’s students.

Co-Colour shares a few reflections on the ups and downs of partnership work.

Thanks to financial contributions by Blackwood Partners, SFU and the City of Surrey, a total of $17,000 has been awarded to fund these student-community engagement projects.

SFU’s Student Engage podcast caught up with Aslam Bulbulia – SCEC finalist for his project “Masculinity Dialogues” – in September, for an incredible conversation about impact, power, language and engagement. Aslam’s ongoing commitment to equity and justice is inspiring.

In 2015 two “two-footers” reimagined how a shopping cart might make a meaningful difference to the residents of Surrey Centre. Kate Elliot and Tammas Grogan won the 2015 Student-Community Engagement Competition for their project, Gro-Carts. And for shopping carts like Herbert, it was a destiny-changing project.

Community-engaged projects can be surprising. But as Shantelle Medel shares with us, “It is better to jump in and encounter the imperfections than be paralyzed by trying to achieve perfection.” It’s messy work, but worth it.

The passion, creativity and ingenuity of SFU students continues to shine, exemplified yet again by the outstanding project presentations that took place at this year’s SFU Student-Community Engagement Competition final awards.

The 2017 Student-Community Engagement Competition (SCEC) Awards Nights are here! Over the winter break, difficult decisions were made, but 9 projects were selected as finalists, each earning the opportunity to compete for an award to help put their innovative project plans into action.