Social Impact Lab
Introduction
Social Impact Lab (SIL) offers a platform for students and community to collaboratively analyze the root causes of complex social and environmental issues and identify strategies for purposeful impact.
Public Labs
Public Labs are event series or workshops open to students, community partners, community members, UBC staff and faculty members. These interactive sessions bring together interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral perspectives, developing the capacity of all participants to analyze complex social issues and move toward community-grounded solutions.
Course-based SIL
Course-based Social Impact Labs integrate the core principles of SIL within for-credit UBC courses. Students work with community partners to understand a complex social or environmental solution and leverage solutions for change. Course-based SILs might be “mini-labs” that cover one or two course sessions, or they might be more in-depth modules or course projects.
Core Principles
Start with community
Social Impact Lab begins by inviting communities to bring their stickiest problems, unresolved questions and most persistent uncertainties to UBC students.
Embrace complexity
Some challenges are too complex for one person, course or organization to solve alone. They are messy, interconnected, and constantly evolving. Traditional community-engaged learning often starts with a defined project and a clear outcome. Social Impact Lab starts earlier by helping students and communities understand what the real problem is, why it exists and what meaningful change could look like.
Work across difference
SIL brings together students and community partners from across disciplines, sectors, lived experiences, and areas of expertise to deepen understanding and shape shared goals. By learning across perspectives, SILs generate a fuller picture of the problem, and co-define what success looks like.
Experiment, learn and iterate
Students and community work together to test new ideas, challenge assumptions, and try unconventional approaches. Because outcomes are not defined in advance, students will learn how to collectively analyze, map systems and understand relationships before jumping to solutions. Conflict, discomfort, mistakes and failure are all commonly part of the learning process.
Create strategies for impact
In SIL, learning leads to action. By working closely with community partners, students help identify leverage points and strengthen existing community efforts, generating shared strategies, stronger partnerships and practical next steps to move promising ideas into meaningful, community-driven action.
How to get involved
Students
Benefits
Social Impact Labs offer accessible opportunities for students to collaborate with and learn from community experts, fostering the creation of innovative and sustainable community-led solutions. Our approach empowers students to challenge existing systems and engage in analysis, and action on critical issues affecting communities in British Columbia. This unique environment allows students to expand their learning beyond the classroom and respond directly to community-identified needs through active participation and collective impacts projects.
Get involved
- Public Labs: In Public Labs, students join community partners, community members, faculty, staff, and peers from diverse disciplines, backgrounds, and experiences to tackle the complex social and environmental challenges facing local communities. Through interactive workshops and events, students strengthen their skills in systems mapping, problem identification, and strategic action while working with others to better understand complex challenges, test ideas, and identify pathways for meaningful impact. Students can join Public Labs by registering for upcoming opportunities listed through CCEL’s website, social media, or newsletters.
- Course based Social Impact Labs: In course-based Social Impact Labs, students work on real-world challenges as part of their regular coursework. Community engagement is integrated into course projects and activities, which helps students develop skills in systems thinking, collaboration and problem-solving while progressing through their degree programs. Course-based SILs also help students understand how their disciplinary knowledge can directly contribute to positive social and environmental change.
Check out “current opportunities”” on this page for more information on how to get involved.
Community partners
Benefits
Social Impact Labs create avenues for community experts to ideate and work alongside students to take action on local issues. Community-held knowledge and priorities are the foundational components which allow this program to analyze issues and foster impactful solutions through one-day events, course projects, panel discussions, dialogue sessions and more.
Get involved
- Public Labs: Have a problem that won’t go away? We are recruiting community partners for a Fall 2026 Social Impact Lab as part of a third-year Integrated Sciences course. For more details and application instructives, check out our call out below.
- Course-based Social Impact Labs: Interested in working with multi-disciplinary, passionate students on community-based engagement projects? Fill out the form below to get started.
Current opportunities
PSYC 322: Social Impact Lab Challenging Ageism
Course-based Social Impact Lab
Through a systems thinking lens, students will explore how individual experiences of aging are shaped by broader social, cultural, community, and policy factors, and how different organizations work together to create meaningful change.
SOWK 440C/526A: Social Impact Lab Community Organization
Course-based Social Impact Lab
This term-long Social Impact Lab (SIL) offers students a deep, hands-on learning experience in community organizing. Working alongside community partners, students will investigate real-world challenges, engage with community knowledge and lived experience, and develop practical strategies for action.
Right to Food: Community Design Studio
Public Lab
What if we treated access to food as a universal right, not a challenge to solve one person at a time? The Right to Food: Community Design Studio brought together students, community members, practitioners, researchers and policymakers to explore food affordability, food insecurity and resilient local food systems in Vancouver’s Westside.
Stay tuned for the second stage of the Right to Food Community Design Studio coming this November
Past projects
For more past project examples, check out the project library below.
If you have questions
For more information regarding the Social Impact Lab, to book an advising appointment or brainstorming session, please email socialimpactlab@ccel.ubc.ca.