Report

This project is a collaboration between the University of Guelph's Community Engaged Scholarship Institute and Student Life. In the spring 2018, a community needs assessment was conducted to support the University of Guelph's Experiential Learning Hub and the University's strategic priority to expand and enhance experiencial learning for students. The needs assessment saught to better understand community partners' needs and perspectives, and to strengthen experiential learning partnerships between community organizations and the University.

How can municipalities balance innovation, policy goals and citizen protection when faced with the growing popularity of companies like Uber or Airbnb? How can we best understand and respond to this new model of a sharing economy? To help answer these questions, the GuelphLab helped develop a Sharing Economy Toolkit.

The People Table had a problem to tackle – the City hadn’t performed well in the 2012 employee engagement survey. In 2014, some departments and service areas had made positive strides, but others had been less successful so the overall picture hadn’t actually changed all that much. “Must do better.” Agreed. So, where to start?

The Active Citizen Project leverages the research and teaching resources of the University via the Guelph Lab, linking them with initiatives at the City that engage citizens in the governance of the city – from policy making to service design/delivery and budgeting.

The Guelph Lab hosted a small group of City staff, University faculty and students to discuss “public innovation” with Jepser Christiansen. Jesper is Head of Research at MindLab, a Danish cross-governmental innovation unit that involves citizens and businesses in creating new solutions for society. Jesper discussed Mindlab’s work and the role of citizens in public sector innovation.

The City of Guelph’s 2014 Open Government Action Plan (attached below) was one of the first of its kind in Canada. The Guelph Lab hosted 30 City of Guelph staff and councillors to discuss Open Government – what it means, its history, and how it has (and hasn’t) been adopted across Canadian municipalities. 

This report discusses the process of integrating a sustainable food systems lens into Guelph's Official Plan. In partnership with the Guelph Wellington Food Roundtable, Research Shop interns conducted a literature review of sustainable and local food systems in order to gain a broader understanding of best practices in the policy realm. With these resources, a detailed set of policy updates were compiled and layered over the existing Official Plan framework (see Appendix I).

This research brief was prepared for the Wellington Guelph Drug Strategy. Compiled from literature reviews created by a third-­year course on corrections and penology, it outlines findings on peer-­led prevention programs for drug and alcohol misuse among youth.

This rapid response research brief was conducted for the Wellington Guelph Drug Strategy Committee. It investigates the effect of geographic proximity of withdrawal management services on treatment for addictions. Distance is examined as a barrier to accessing addictions treatment in general and withdrawal management services in particular in the following report. Potential solutions for mitigating this barrier are also presented.

This report outlines a community-based research process that took place in Guelph and Wellington County during the winter, spring and summer of 2010 in collaboration with the Guelph and Wellington Task Force for Poverty Elimination. For this project, community members with lived experience of poverty were trained to work as community researchers in order to identify gaps in services and programs and issues with accessing services and programs for those living in poverty.