Thursday April 29, 2021
3:00-4:30 EST

Learn how community-engaged practitioners working across the fields of participatory research, participatory visual methods, community arts, and community facilitation have adapted their participatory work and facilitation to online and remote contexts, and the unique ethical and pedagogical opportunities and tensions that arise. There will also be opportunities to network with others.

This event is open to students, community-engaged practitioners, community artists, participatory researchers, and anyone interested in the field. Register by event-brite to receive a personalized Zoom link to join the webinar. 

Panelists:

• Dr. Ananya Banerjee, Assistant Professor, School of Population & Global Health, McGill University
• Khari McClelland, Creative Facilitator and Musician
• Jessica Bleuer, Theatre of the Oppressed Facilitator, Registered Drama Therapist and Lecturer, Concordia University
• Dr. Lori Chambers, Community health researcher and post-doctoral fellow,  Factor Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto.
• Adam Barrett, Program Coordinator at East End Arts, and playwright, performer, producer, and projection designer
• Moderated by: Dr Sarah Switzer, Popular Educator, Participatory Researcher and Post-doctoral fellow, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

— To Register for April 29, 2021 and learn about our panelists —
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/community-engagement-in-covid-19-a-practitioner-led-panel-tickets-147628676345?fbclid=IwAR07sojL7YY8JUOAL98Pltja_Jb-9fN01NnzzpeMVO9FjharV7gIa0LSNqs

For registration and outreach-related questions, please contact: naima.raza@mail.utoronto.ca
For questions about the project, please contact: sarah.switzer@utoronto.ca
Flyer created by: Andrea Vela Alarcón (@its.allegra)

This event is co-sponsored by the Youth Research Lab at OISE, Neighbourhood Arts Network, the Centre for Community Partnerships, Gendering Adolescent AIDS Prevention at New College, and a group of community-engaged practitioners working across community and academic fields. The event is funded by the New College Initiatives Fund (NCIF) at New College, University of Toronto.

Save the Date!

This event is part of a 2-part event series. On May 20, 2021 from 3:00-5:00pm we will launch some audio-visual resources to help practitioners think through remote/online facilitation with communities. We will also present findings from an affiliated study about how community-engaged practitioners are adapting their participatory, community-engaged practice because of covid-19.  Join us in our community of practice to learn more!

Learn More: Ontario Midwifery — a video series about Ontario midwifery care that presents public information in honour of Black communities. 

LMOM was created with the aim to:

• increase public awareness about midwifery care and strengthen Black communities’ understanding of their pregnancy care options,
• increase respect for midwives, and highlight Black midwives in particular,
• increase representation of Black midwives, students and birthing people so that our communities can see themselves reflected in birth and caregiving stories,
• encourage members from Black communities to consider becoming midwives.

To attend, you can register for the public virtual screening on Sunday April 11, 2021 at 1:30 PM EDT here. Following the screening there will also be a panel discussion with the theme Black birth Ontario. Please note that closed captioning is provided throughout the event.

Follow us on social media on Facebook, instagram and twitter: @lmomidwifery for more information. There is also a graphic enclosed for you to share with others! Whether you know about midwifery, or nothing at all, we hope that you will gather with us and be part of this event!

We hope to see and celebrate with you virtually on Sunday April 11th. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at learnmoreontariomidwifery@gmail.com. 

We are accepting abstracts for our upcoming virtual conference! See below for details!

Thursday, March 25th, 2021 from 12- 4 PM

Deadline for All Abstracts: Monday, February 22nd, 2021

The goal of the symposium is to bring together community youth (ages 16-35) who are part of a youth group/organization, not attending University, or would like to get connected with people of similar passions) and university students to share their research and artistic pieces on youth sexual health. The symposium will provide a crucial forum for youth asserting their right for progressive sexual health education. During the symposium, students, youth, academics, policy makers, and community members working in or interested in the field of youth sexual health will be given the opportunity to network and engage in each other’s work. We encourage students from all disciplines and community youth to present research “in progress,” test out ideas for a thesis or dissertation proposal, or present original research or artistic pieces.

We are interested in work that includes but is not limited to:

• Social justice and sexual and reproductive rights
• COVID-19 and its effect on sexual health care and access
• HIV prevention, sexual and reproductive health 
• Harm reduction
• Trans and intersex sexual health inclusion
• Indigenous and two-spirit sexual health access
• Youth focused access and education initiatives
• Community based methods to engage youth in sexual health research
• LGBTQ2SA inclusive sexual health
• Decolonization approaches to youth sexual health education
• Intersectional approaches to equity and the social determinants of sexual health for youth
• Globalization, migration, and sexual health
• Structural violence and reproductive justice
• Colonialism and sexuality
• Neoliberalism and sexual health inequities
• Artistic approaches to youth sexual health research and education
• Disability and sexual health

Keynote Talk: Professor Ciann Wilson (Wilfred Laurier University): Community sexual health researcher with youth from diverse communities

Performance: SExT (Sex Education by Theatre) 

Registration + accessibility inquires for symposium by Mar 22, 2021 at https://tinyurl.com/symporegis

Contact Information: If you have any questions, please email vibhuti.kacholia@mail.utoronto.ca

We are thrilled to welcome Vibhuti Kacholia as GAAP’s Community-Engaged Learning student for the 2020-2021 year. Vibhuti will be helping us adapt and transition our World AIDS Day and research symposium events to online platforms, and will be supporting a number of our research projects such as Youth Activism Over Time. Vibhuti will also work to compile resources for youth navigating sexual health services in Toronto during the pandemic.

Vibhuti is the undergraduate community engaged learning student with GAAP for the 2020-2021 school year. She is a fourth-year student studying a major in Global Health with a double minor in Psychology and Equity Studies. Vibhuti is passionate about health equity and access to comprehensive, culturally competent care. Her focus lies in sexual and reproductive justice for youth. As a research assistant in Dr. Carmen Logie’s Stigma & Sexual Health Interventions to Nurture Empowerment (SSHINE) lab, she has explored health outcomes for trans men in low and middle income countries and worked on qualitative research projects understanding HIV and STI stigma for urban youth refugees in Kampala. She is a member of the U of T Sexual Education Centre and Women’s Health Collective as well as has volunteered at Alliance for South Asian Aids Prevention (ASAAP). Vibhuti is excited to work with community partners to move GAAP’s World AIDS Day and Sexual Health Symposium online and create relevant workshops and materials to encourage resilience and empowerment during the pandemic. 

Image Description: Vibhuti Kacholia, GAAP Community Engaged Learning Student, 2020-2021

GAAP is pleased to partner on the upcoming event: Physics of Black Sexualities! Please join us!

When: Thursday February 27, 2020,  5:00-7:30pm

Where: Jackman Humanities – Room 100, 170 St George St., Toronto

Physics of Black Sexualities will be a discussion on Blackness, sexuality and what the disenfranchisement of Black queer communities has meant/and what it means today. We know that Black History and Black revolutionary movements would never have been possible without our LGBTQ+ family and we need to be holding critical conversations in BHM to high-light where we, as a student association and as a community, need to be showing up and out for our family. As we move into a new decade, it is with urgency that we must address the impact of homophobia, transphobia, stigmatization of sexually transmitted infections in our communities and calling one another in to do that.

Panelists:

Prof. Andrea Allen 

Andrea S. Allen research has addressed matters of race, sexuality, gender, violence, and religion in Brazil and the African Diaspora. Through a focus on LGBTQ Brazilians, especially Afro-Brazilian lesbian women, her work explores the effects of marginalization from an embodied perspective. In interrogating the everyday, her research prioritizes lived experiences as an essential locus of inquiry when contemplating the contradictions and dissonances of human existence. Dr. Allen has conducted ethnographic research related to the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé, same-sex sexuality, and gender. Her first book Violence and Desire in Brazilian Lesbian Relationships (Palgrave Macmillan 2015) focused on the experiences of lesbian women in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

Tatiana Ferguson- Transformed Project Coordinator for Metrac

Tatiana Ferguson is a Sexual Health Educator, Project Coordinator and Human Rights advocate. Their work encompasses community consultations, youth engagement and facilitating discussions on the social determinants of health, Trans Awareness, creating a safe space and anti-oppression. Their most notable accomplishment has been working with the Federal government to develop a public policy that acknowledges citizens Gender identity and Gender expression. Tatiana has also worked with the City of Toronto to raise awareness about Transphobia and racism through the Toronto For All campaign. They have facilitated sessions on Gender and sexuality as a guest speaker in Vancouver, Montreal and Ontario to encourage dialogue about diversity and inclusion with a focus on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.

Nakia Lee-Foon

Nakia is a Ph.D. candidate in the Social and Behavioural Health Sciences division of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Her award-winning research focuses on exploring the sexual health literacy of young, self-identified Black-African, Caribbean and Canadian gay, bisexual, queer, non-hetero+ youth in Toronto, Ontario. Nakia completed her Master of Health Sciences with specialization in Community Health from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Her master’s thesis explored the state of Black-Canadian parent-youth sexual health communication in Toronto. Nakia has experience teaching in the community as well as at the undergraduate and graduate levels at several Ontario universities.

We are pleased to announce an upcoming event hosted by Rainbow’s Pride in Scarborough!

Event Details:

February 12, 2020, 4-800pm

Children’s Peace Theatre

305 Dawes Rd, Toronto

LGTBQ+ inclusive, wheel-chair accessible space and washroom, drinks and snacks provided

We are accepting abstracts for our upcoming conference! See below for details!

The goal of the symposium is to bring together community youth (ages 16-35 who are part of a youth group/organization, not attending University, or would like to get connected with people of similar passions) and university students to share their research and artistic pieces on youth sexual health. The symposium will provide a crucial forum for youth asserting their right for progressive sexual health education. During the symposium, students, youth, academics, policy makers, and community members working in or interested in the field of youth sexual health will be given the opportunity to network and engage in each other’s work. We encourage students from all disciplines and community youth to present research “in progress,” test out ideas for a thesis or dissertation proposal, or present original research or artistic pieces.

We are interested in work that includes but is not limited to:

• Social justice and sexual and reproductive rights
• HIV prevention, sexual and reproductive health
• Harm reduction
• Trans and intersex sexual health inclusion
• Indigenous and two-spirit sexual health access
• Youth focused access and education initiatives
• Community based methods to engage youth in sexual health research
• LGBTQ2SA inclusive sexual health
• Decolonization approaches to youth sexual health education
• Intersectional approaches to equity and the social determinants of sexual health for youth
• Globalization, migration, and sexual health
• Structural violence and reproductive justice
• Colonialism and sexuality
• Neoliberalism and sexual health inequities
• Artistic approaches to youth sexual health research and education
• Disability and sexual health
• Preserving sexual health and reproductive rights in the Ford era

Keynote Talk: Ciann Wilson (Assistant Professor, Wilfred Laurier University, community sexual health researcher with youth from diverse communities)

 Performance: SExT (Sex Education by Theatre)

This is a FREE symposium: A light breakfast and lunch will be provided.

*Registration, inquiries, accessibility needs: shannon.jankari@mail.utoronto.ca by Mar 13, 2020

For more information on submission guidelines, see pdf here.

Call for Papers – Youth Sexual Health Research Symposium 2020

We are delighted to host Shannon Jankari as our community-engaged learning student for the 2019-2020 academic year.

Shannon is the undergraduate community engaged learning student with GAAP for the 2019-2020 school year. She is in her fourth year at the University of Toronto, pursuing a double major in Equity Studies and Women and Gender Studies. Frustrated by the heteronormative, stigmatizing sexual health education she received throughout grade school and secondary school, Shannon is interested in exploring what embodies transformative, engaging, and inclusive sexual health education. As a research assistant in the Department of Disability Studies and co-editor of the journal Knots, Shannon analyzes the complex relationship between disability and desire in this year’s issue. She hopes to be able to apply this knowledge to the collective, creative resistance work that GAAP performs. She will be working with the university’s Sexual Education Center, where she formerly volunteered, as well Planned Parenthood and SExT, as they plan events for the coming year, including World AIDS Day and the Sexual Health Symposium.

Welcome Shannon!

Rainbows Pride in Scarborough (RPIS) has received funding from Community One Foundation for their project,  Disability Express Photoshoot. RPIS is a proud partner of GAAP. Congratulations RPIS! We are thrilled at this news!

RPIS is reaching out to LGTBQ youth or adults who identify as intellectual, physical, and developmental disabilities and all disabilities. Together, they will create their own costumes and props for professional portraits that will be shared at a final exhibit, and widely within the Scarborough community. The project participants a chance to express themselves and feel sex and body positive, while also decreasing ableism, sexism and discrimination in the larger community. They have will have a photographer, makeup artist and hair stylist available.

Are you interested?

RPIS is seeking 15-18 participants for:

• 6 costume, burlesque, drag queen and king workshops
• a professional photoshoot

Tokens, snacks and food provided

For more information or to sign up contact, Rainbow at <inforainbowspride@gmail.com>

We want to thank Talia Learner for contributing to GAAP this year (2018-2019) in her role as a undergraduate service learning student!

Talia Lerner studies anthropology and sociology at the University of Toronto. She was the secretary of the Gay-Straight Alliance in her high school and taught non-normative sexual health to its members. She also mentored younger LGBT students regarding family and peer issues. She organized GAAP’s Youth World AIDS Day 2018 event which partnered with the Sexual Education Centre at the University of Toronto, PEAK at Planned Parenthood, and SExT to teach students about safe sex in a fun and inclusive way.

Thank you Talia for all your efforts!