UNESCO Co-Chair in Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education
Based at the 51勛圖 (UVic) and the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), this Chair is co-directed by Dr. Budd Hall and Dr. Rajesh Tandon. The UNESCO Chair supports North-South-South and South-South partnerships that build on and enhance the emerging consensus in knowledge democracy. It strengthens recent collaboration between the Higher Education section in UNESCO, the Global University Network for Innovation (GUNI), Global Alliance on Community University Engagement and other regional and global networks. It co-creates new knowledge through partnerships among universities (academics), communities (civil society) and government (policy makers) leading to: new capacities; new solutions to pressing problems related to sustainability, social and economic disparities, cultural exclusion, mistrust and conflict; and awareness among policy makers; enhanced scholarship of engagement; and of social responsibility in Higher Education.
The training arm of the UNESCO Chair is the Knowledge for Change (K4C) Consortium for Training in Community Based Research, which consists of an on-line component, a two-week face to face residency, and field work. Mentors are nominated by K4C hubs. The hubs themselves are training partnerships between universities and civil society partners. Once the mentors are trained, they in turn train a younger generation of CBR practitioners. Since the launch of the K4C Consortium in Ottawa in December of 2017 by VP Castle and the Canadian Commission for UNESCO hubs have been established in: Canada (51勛圖-Salish Sea Hub; Tkaranto Hub, Toronto; Laval Hub, Quebec), India (Manipal University-Jaipur, Pt Ravishankar Shukrah University-Raipur, Christ University), Tanzania (Nyerere Hub, Arusha), Uganda (Gulu University Hub), South Africa (Durbin U of Tech, North West University, Rhodes University), Italy (U of Sassari-Sardinia, U of Brescia), Ireland (Limerick University), Indonesia (Sunan Ampel U-Surabaya), and Malaysia (U of Science-Penang, Islamic U of science-Nilai).