Community Academic Collaborative

Who we are

This network emerged out of the Community Food Security hub of the Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement Project (CFICE), a Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council funded project. CFICE has now entereed its second phase and Food Secure Canada is a partner in the Brokering Food Soveriegnty Working Group. 

What we do

The Community Academic Collaborative fosters dialogue in order to promote collaboration and deepen understanding between academics and the community sector. We do this through:

• Knowledge Mobilization and Capacity building activities: webinars and workshops to share research and policy analysis
• Relationship Building: Meeting once a year at the Food Secure Canada assembly and the Canadian Association of Food Studies’ assembly.
• Brokering Infrastructure: Tools that make community-academic collaborations in the food movement easier and more effective. 

Some of our recent and up-coming activities include:

• Organizing interactive sessions on brokering community-acadecmic collaboroation in naitonal food policy at the Canadian Asssociation of Food Studies Assembly in May of 2017
• Collaborating on a Civil Society-Academic workshop in advance of the federal governmment's Food Summit in Ottawa, June of 2017.
• Co-editing a Special Issue of the Canadian Food Studies Journal on Building an Integrated National Food Policy, set to be reelased in the Spring of 2018.

Collaborating with Food Secure Canada

Food Secure Canada values our relationship with academics across the country who wish to engage with us as an organization or to connect with the broader food movement in Canada. The high volume of requests for collaboration with academics prompted Food Secure Canada to develop a Protocol, which guides our decision-making on the level of staff and resources that can be made available to any given project. We would welcome a similar protocol from our academic allies so that community groups and initiatives across Canada better understand the processes, opportunities and constraints that exist related to academic research projects and timelines.

Our Protocol can be downloaded here. We welcome feedback and suggestions on this working document.