By Kirsten Fenn
Discussions about mobile apps for social change and how to improve research impact on Canadian communities were headliners at the second day of the C²UExpo at Carleton.
Giovanna Mingarelli, CEO and co-founder of mobile app PlayMC2, opened events on Thursday, May 28 with a keynote speech about harnessing the technological intuition of millennials for positive change.
“If we could turn even a fraction of (their) cognitive surplus into social engagement in some capacity, the world would be a very different place,” Mingarelli said of the 1.7 billion 18- to 35-year-olds globally who are more in tune than ever with social media and spend an average of eight billion hours a week gaming.
Mobile apps like Mingarelli’s PlayMC2 are designed to inspire this kind of social change. Launched in 68 countries, it allows users to document positive things they do for others during the day, which can “effectively drive change in seconds,” she said.
Anita Abraham, who travelled from Toronto where she is executive director of a student food security organization called Meal Exchange, said that while small actions are good, citizens need to challenge assumptions that small acts alone will change the world.
“Millennials are inheriting some of the greatest intractable problems of our time … We need all sorts of different kinds of leadership, we need different kinds of action on policy, we need our millennials to be stepping up and taking action on those things,” Abraham said.
Bouncing off the idea of creating positive change, a roundtable in the afternoon addressed how to improve the positive impact of campus-community research on Canadian communities.
Panelists’ solutions included allotting more funding for community projects, better understanding how communities evolve and engaging more students in community organizations so they become future champions, advocates and donors.
Michelle Gauthier, vice-president of Imagine Canada, challenged audience members to re-think the impact they could have if charities thought of themselves as a collective rather than individuals.
It’s something that makes sense to Abra Brynne, who works at Food Secure Canada in British Columbia.
“There’s still the assumption that the language of academia conveys a superior knowledge to the language of the community,” Brynne said, adding that stronger connections still need to be built between universities and community organizations – something C2UExpo aims to do.
Throughout the day, smaller sessions focussed on building those bridges. Participants visited community organizations around the city and saw research projects on display at an engagement fair.
Conference Co-ordinator Nicole Bedford said more was in store for Friday, including another daily “culture shock” event like Wednesday’s rap performance and Thursday’s chemistry and theatre shows.
But they’re all designed to be secret – similar to the concept of a flash mob, Bedford said.
There was an evening of awards and speeches on Wednesday, May 27, where Community Partners in Care received the 2015 Community-Campus Partnerships in Health award. The university-community partnership addresses depression in under-resourced communities of colour in Los Angeles.
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