GSWS Caucus Mentorship Session with Joel Harnest

By Nikita Mitra

The idea for the Mentorship Series came about in a Professional Development class with the present cohort of M.A. students. The GSWS department, Caucus and students agreed that they’d like for external mentors to interact with the students as part of a networking and knowledge-building exercise that can have practical benefits beyond the academy.

After close to 5 months of hard work by the students and department staff – the talk was finally arranged with our first mentor – Joel Harnest. Joel is a Community Engagement Specialist with the B.C. Hepatitis Network and holds close to 15 years of experience as a facilitator & convenor of dialogue. After meeting Joel for the first time at an SFU Centre for Dialogue event, a student knew he was the perfect fit for being the first mentor to the graduate students.

The session started with lots of chatting and snacking from the yummy spread the department had organized, before everyone settled down and listened to both the formal introduction that had been prepared for Joel and Joel’s thoughtful and witty additions to his introduction. Then, it was time for popcorn-style audience introductions – where the attendees had to share their names, pronouns (if comfortable) and what they thought they would get out of the session. Most folks said that they had no expectations, while some said that they were looking to move into a more intensive community research leg with their studies and work and therefore needed a practical guide in facilitating good conversations.

After carefully noting down everyone’s responses and expectations, Joel commenced his brilliant presentation by asking everyone what they thought of the following types of engagement: community engagement, public engagement, stakeholder engagement, rightsholder engagement and community-based academic research. Spending time on each definition and what everyone thought of it, led to some ingenious snowballing of ideas. Reema Faris, a PhD candidate and sessional instructor with the department, asked “What is a community?” to nudge everyone to think about what that looks like when defining community engagement.

Joel then moved onto his personal tenets when working in the field of community engagement and justice & equity. Some of his vulnerable insights and teachings included the following: critique the system and care for the person, be aware of power by disrupting/distributing what the existing power looks like and practice service-oriented facilitation. This led to discussions about anonymity and confidentiality, building safe spaces and doing trust-based exercises.

This provided a great segue to what Joel wanted to speak about next about practical, professional advice for the students – which is about moving at the speed of trust when facilitating discussions, recognizing people with lived/living experiences in leadership roles and understanding where one’s expertise fits in: either in advisory committees, in working groups, as facilitators or notetakers or even as data analysts. Questions around this segment of the session focused on how to pursue a career in community engagement in Canada, how to properly set up an engagement session and how to work with community leaders.

The session ended with a very helpful slide on choosing one’s adventure, which could be either upskilling in facilitation, brushing up on ethics & pedagogy or looking at diverse tools & skills like conflict resolution. Once the formal presentation was over, questions continued in popcorn-style and students chose to approach Joel as well for personal career advice. A big round of applause for Joel’s amazing mentorship soon resonated around the room and GSWS’s halls.

Excited chatter ensued long after Joel had left about our next mentorship session as it was a great success and worth the wait. If you too, are excited to know more – watch this space!