In BC, women in grade 12 are less likely than their male peers to pursue post-secondary studies in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics & Medicine). In partnership with the Society for Canadian Women in Science & Technology (SCWIST), Emma is redesigning the Soapbox Science Vancouver program to include mentorship opportunities for  grade 9-11 girls in Vancouver. Participants will be partnered with volunteer STEMM mentors who will provide them with laboratory experience and career guidance.

In partnership with Black Block Association (BBA), Delali’s project, titled Hire Black Youth Initiative, will facilitate greater access to career opportunities for black youth in Vancouver. This will be accomplished by creating an online job matching platform with access to mentorship, skills training and skills development mixers, in partnership with organizations that pledge to support the representation and empowerment of black youth at individual and community scales.

Research has highlighted a lack of health literacy in newcomer demographics. This has been exacerbated by frequent changes to guidelines and restrictions seen throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.  Through this collaborative project with PIRS (Pacific Immigrant Resources Society), Emilie hopes to create a toolkit of healthcare resources, complete with workshops, infographics, and condensed pamphlets fully translated into multiple languages by volunteers from the UBC Vaccine Literacy Club (VLC) and professional translators. The project will also engage newcomer women to co-publish a vaccine literacy children’s book into 5 languages.

Men have the highest rates of death by suicide in Canada. Contributing risk factors include social disconnection, depression, trauma, loneliness, and harmful masculine norms associated with seeking emotional support. Despite this heightened risk, there is currently a lack of male-inclusive mental health response programs in Canada. This project is in partnership with the Canadian Centre for Men and Families Vancouver (CCMF-V), and aims to decrease suicide risk among men by building greater networks of social support within our communities.

In partnership with the Environmental Youth Alliance (EYA), Shogofa’s project addresses barriers to accessing Indigenous and community-based land stewardship training and learning opportunities for marginalized BIPOC (black, Indigenous and People of Color) youth in Vancouver’s downtown eastside. Through hands-on learning, this initiative aims to empower youth to explored land-based pedagogies and ecological stewardship.

The South Asian community in BC is facing a substance use and overdose crisis, particularly among young people. In response, Avneet is co-creating a workshop series for three high schools in the Lower Mainland. The project will facilitate four workshops over four weeks in each high school, focused on introducing the issue of substance use and overdose in the South Asian community, overcoming stigma with empathy, advocacy, leadership, and overdose response and prevention training.

Teachers and advisors make up 7% of the workforce in British Columbia, and there has been little focus on improving working conditions to support their mental health. Carolina’s project hopes to bring the conceptualized “Wellness Pod” to life –  a space designed with biophilic principles in mind meant to maximize wellness recuperation throughout an educator’s day. The timelessness and scalability of our design will be complemented by the Human and Nature Youth Club‘s experience,  resources networks. The vision for the Wellness Pod is  for it to be a  miniature greenhouse found within school grounds which provides conditions conducive for stress release and resilience building for users.

In partnership with the Nisga’a Valley Health Authority, Truman’s project aims to facilitate the incorporation of Indigenous-led, traditional, and land-based physical activities within kinesiology exercise prescriptions normally delivered in primary care settings. By engaging with  four Nisga’a communities through  discussions  and sharing circles, traditional and/or land-based physical activities will be identified and implemented in collaboration with community members.

The global textiles industry is one of the world’s fastest-growing industries, and has been criticized for its human rights injustices and environmental impact. Hammad’s project creates a educational resources that  bring awareness to secondary school communities in Vancouver, BC, in hopes of inspiring action. These educational resources will include presentations and/or workshops which  highlight unsustainable practices and human rights violations within  fashion and retail industries, and demonstrates how to overcome  societal pressures that inform consumption.

Each year, over 300,000 new immigrants from diverse sociocultural backgrounds relocate to Canada. Language barriers remain a significant obstacle to the provision of equitable healthcare among these communities. By partnering with S.U.C.C.E.S.S, Lynda is working to advance equitable healthcare in Canada by providing free healthcare translation services to immigrants, newcomers, and those with low English-language proficiency, through the Volentia Healthcare Translation  initiative.

Christian works with the Learning Buddies Network to make tutoring accessible and affordable to children who attend Bella Bella Community School, an Indigenous school in Bella Bella, BC. They will provide children who attend the school with access to free, one-to-one online mentorship and tutoring.

Amarildo works with EaglesLand Albanian Society of BC to promote and empower the underrepresented Albanian community in BC. They will do this by:

• Creating informational workshops with a focus on health education/literacy, education, employment opportunities, and settlement information
• Launching the AlbMentor mentorship program to help match one youth with a successful mentor and a volunteer with a new resident of BC 
• Creating an Albanian Business in BC directory

Yaksh and Sohat work with Pacific Community Resources Society and Melius Mentorship Network to help refugee and immigrant youth in various youth programs navigate post-secondary and careers. They will do this by providing 6 interactive workshops that tackle topics related to post-secondary preparation for careers in healthcare, engineering, computer science, law, business and laboratory science. After completing these workshops, each newcomer youth will be paired with one UBC undergraduate and graduate student for one year of one-on-one mentorship.

Audrey works with West Moberly First Nations (WMFN) on Dancing with the Land (Nun ke’ Daahwéhsats), a project to advance understanding of how climate change impacts and policies will impact Indigenous self-determination as well as the cultural values/rights associated with terrestrial and aquatic environments. Their work researching climate-action plans and co-creating a research needs assessment for the WMFN will lead to a cooperative climate research agenda (CCRA) and a multi-year effort to collaboratively produce climate research and recommendations for WMFN’s environmental planning.

Raha works with Watari Counselling and Support Services Society to pilot a project to provide occupational health and safety training to agricultural migrant workers (AMWs) in British Columbia’s (BC) Lower Mainland and Okanagan region. By providing opportunities for AMWs to receive resources and services, they are able to work safer, deal with accidents or emergencies in an informed way, and feel self-empowered when asserting their rights.

Njamba was inspired by his participation in UBC CCEL’s Social Impact Lab to develop an online “Social Impact Initiatives Tracker” for marginalized communities. This wikipedia-style database will provide archival, in-progress, and developing social impact initiatives for interested changemakers to learn about local organizations that reflect their values, make new connections, and take action. They will do this by:

• collaborating with 6 students to research and build a wiki-based website; 
• consulting at least 10 identified IBPOC communities to input information on 30 different initiatives; 
• evaluating the feasibility of expanding the project’s scope to all self-identified marginalized populations in British Columbia.

Yahya works with Spheres of Influence to create a monthly podcast series dedicated to connecting local Vancouver-based challenges with broader global issues, themes, and patterns. In each podcast episode, they will highlight a local issue and situate it in the broader global context. As the voices of youth and marginalized groups are repeatedly excluded from dominant discourses, this podcast will especially work to amplify marginalized voices in prominent media spaces.

Emilie works with the Pacific Immigrant Resources Society (PIRS) to organize in-community workshops for newcomer women on vaccine and health literacy in BC from a trauma-informed approach. The primary objectives of these workshops are to:

• Increase newcomers’ access to information;
• Build a lifelong understanding of vaccines;
• Enhance the safety of newcomer women and their children;
• Build invaluable trust between newcomers and the Canadian healthcare system.