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Research
Domain: Group Three - Informal Learning Cultures
Title
of Project: Growing Jobs for Living: Environmental Adult
Education, Participatory Research and Job Creations Project,
Belleville
Start
Date: April 1, 1997
Academic Investigator: Dr. B. Hall (OISE/UT)
Community Partner: CASAE
Student Researcher: Darlene Clover (OISE/UT)
The
objective of this community-college-university project located
in the Quinte bio-region is to use non-formal and informal
adult learning, participatory research and participatory
evaluation to help people learn to create a healthy more
sustainable community. Non-formal and informal education
processes are used in this project to augment the capacity of
individuals and community-based organisations to address
problems of environmental degradation and unemployment. The
Quinte bio-region is an area which has experienced significant
economic structural changes over the past five years. As an
area of relatively established industrial production dating
back to the earliest European settlement of Ontario, the
region has undergone a strong rise in unemployment. At the
same time, in part due to the long patterns of chemical
agricultural land use and industrial production, it is an area
experiencing much environmental degradation in terms of high
arsenic levels in rivers and streams, pesticide and herbicide
run-off into drinking water supplies, and contaminated soil.
"The
Growing Jobs for Living Project" is unique because it is
a university-college-community project and also, because it is
a research project within a research project. The inner circle
of researchers come from the community. Members participating
in this project are researching into environmental and social
problems in their community and identifying job creation
alternatives. The outside circle is an analysis of the ways in
which non-formal and informal education and learning processes
increase community awareness, challenge assumptions, and
stimulate action towards the creation of more healthy,
sustainable home-grown work.
This
project combines values and criteria of environmental
sustainability with the needs in a specific community for
economic restructuring. Green Job Creation represents an
important alternative to the consumer driven global industrial
production trends which are being experienced all across
Canada. This project combines locally generated environmental
research findings with job needs through a process of
community revitalization. Adult education in the form of study
circles, workshops and participatory research is one key to
community transformation.
This
is an important model for alternative job creation which might
well be exploredby other communities across Canada and around
the world and therefore, the work is being broadly
disseminated.
Research
Questions
The
research questions are in two parts. The first set is what the
community members are researchers set-out to discover. The
second set is a look at the overall project in terms of
evaluation.
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Community
Research Questions
What types of alternative employment opportunities have
already been undertaken in the community? Were they
successful or not? If Yes, why? If not, why not?
This research done in the form of survey and interviews
and was undertaken by three Belleville community members
and one Senior Researcher from the University of Toronto.
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What
are some of the types of sustainable jobs that could be
created in this community?
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Where
is the support in the community for this work? What
resources exist in the community to begin this work?
The
data for these two questions came from:
a)
a final question on the survey mentioned above
b)
four community workshops
c)
two workshops at Loyalist College
d)
informal interviews with the Mayor and various political
party representatives
Evaluation
Questions
In
addition to the above research questions, researchers are also
interested in the finding responses to the following
questions:
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What
have been the most effective learning processes?
What have been some of the major outcomes of the project?
What have been
some of the obstacles faced by community members?
In what ways did community workshop/research participants
augment their learning through other sources?
-
How
important has the broader educational aspect of this
project been to its success?
The
results of these questions will be published in 2000.
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