Experiential course hailed as ‘a made-in-Manitoba triumph’

The University of Winnipeg is marking the 10th session of an experiential course — or, as a critic once put it, “Marxist summer camp” — that brings suburban and inner-city students together to study social justice issues in class and community internships.

Dozens of people gathered at Merchants Corner on Selkirk Avenue, home to the Inner-City Work Study program, to celebrate the milestone on Thursday.

Instructor Lorie English told the crowd the impact of students’ outreach and grant-writing work has given her hope amid a particularly challenging season.

“This has been a tough summer for the sector,” said English, who has taught the community development course since it launched in May 2017 as a four-month pilot project funded by the City of Winnipeg.

“What we’re seeing right now in the community, with the multiple intersecting crises that we have, led us into some pretty deep conversations as a classroom,” she said.

The Winnipeg Police Service arrested more than 100 people during a 10-day initiative that began June 24 to target open drug use and trafficking networks in downtown neighbourhoods.

The sweeps resumed Friday with a new emphasis on collaboration between WPS and community agencies whose leaders had criticized the service’s initial top-down approach.

Work study participants witnessed police show up to their placements to search and detain clients.

Students spend the majority of their summer in paid placements at non-profit organizations such as Harvest Manitoba, Sunshine House and New Journey Housing. They gather at Merchant’s Corner once per week for formal lessons.

Seeing police show up to their workplaces — an experience made even more complicated by the fact many organizations do not support police sweeps — showed students the real-life consequences of the systemic problems and statistics they’re studying in class, co-instructor Sarah Leeson-Klym said.

Among the units covered this term are the over-representation of racialized people in prisons, food security, feminist theory, harm reduction and affordable housing.

An assignment dubbed “It takes all day to be poor,” tasked students with navigating community resources while grappling with a complex scenario, such as losing an affordable housing unit in a fire, while on a fixed budget.

“What this course does is really give students a way to more deeply understand some of the narratives that are out there and to challenge those narratives,” English said, noting she wants students to question, among many things, how open drug use is linked to an affordable housing crisis and why it’s permitted at music festivals but not downtown.

The executive director of the West Central Women’s Resource Centre, English is well versed in the negative stereotypes about residents who access 640 Ellice Ave. and other organizations.

The instructor was among those who became teary-eyed Thursday afternoon as students and supporters reflected on the history of the Inner-City Work Study, formerly known as Youth United, and student takeaways.

Shaelyn Desmarais McLeod said being a part of this year’s cohort has made her think differently about the North End community in which she grew up, and the importance of empathy.

“Anti-oppression, disability, poverty, harm reduction — all of these topics and more, reconciliation, community development — it’s all intersectional,” said Desmarais McLeod, a student who is studying rhetoric, writing and communications at U of W.

“What I want to do with (my newfound knowledge) is be as well informed as I can and share that with others.”

The program is designed so each group has a mix of students who hail from different disciplines, neighbourhoods and ethnicities. It was modelled after Boston’s City Year community service program.

Transcona resident Macy Wilgosh has spent more than 400 hours working at West Broadway Community Organization’s Good Food Club since the spring. Wilgosh is now on a first-name basis with many inner-city residents who access the site that she didn’t know existed a year ago.

“(This experience) made me take a step back and realize everyone has a very unique story and has a lot of different things to offer and I’m excited to take that mantra, that idea, into education,” the aspiring teacher said.

Since partnering with Coun. Brian Mayes (St. Vital) to secure $200,000 to launch the initiative in May 2017, 190 students have participated in the program.

Mayes, an outspoken champion of the program, called it “a made-in-Manitoba triumph” that has benefitted the city at large.

Even the critics at Winnipeg City Hall, one of whom called it “Marxist summer camp” during a closed-door meeting a decade ago, have since acknowledged its value, he said.

(English said she’d happily rebrand the program accordingly if it were up to her.)

The university has relied on what program co-ordinator Kerniel Aasland called “a constellation of funding,” from RBC Future Launch, the Winnipeg Foundation and Mitacs, among others, to stay afloat.

The program’s records suggest 66 per cent of students have maintained some form of contact with inner-city organizations, such as volunteering with the site where they were placed during the course, after completion.

A total of 190 participants are estimated to have contributed 124,000 hours to non-profits in Winnipeg over the last decade.

Students have been placed in roles in more than 90 community-serving organizations.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca