Our approach

Community engagement at UVic brings people together to create meaningful partnerships that have vital and enduring impacts across campus, in our communities and around the world. This work is foundational to a meaningful post-secondary experience where a university can act as a resource and hub for its communities.

At UVic, our collaborative and inclusive culture is at the heart of who we are and what we do. Our relationships are important because we promote a culture of knowledge sharing. We invite collaborative action to deepen our connection to one another – and to the communities where we live and where we work. Our goals and objectives are guided by our Community-University Engagement Initiative which is rooted in UVic’s Strategic Framework. We are proud and passionate about working in partnership with our community.

Rolling up our sleeves, we come to listen, to learn, to share and to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We aim to create a network of inspired people who are committed to the wellbeing of one another and the planet.

We are connected by a common desire to better human and environmental understanding and circumstances. We are inspired to make a meaningful difference by working together.

Our goal

To engage our community – on and off campus – to develop and nurture inclusive and respectful partnerships of mutual benefit that positively impact people and the planet.

Ways in which we can work together

We aim to ground all of the relationships we have in the university’s values of justice, equity, diversity & inclusion and to honour Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Connected by a common desire to better human and environmental understanding and circumstances, we are inspired to make a meaningful difference by working together.

Collective impact

People + knowledge and creativity + energy and actions = lives rich with common purpose doing things together than matter for others and the environment.

Collective impact strategies bring together a broad spectrum of public, private and civil society organizations to catalyze action-oriented partnerships in solving challenges. These partnerships generate a mutually beneficial environment in which the co-creation of knowledge and action can address local and global challenges and drive sustainable change. The outcomes of these partnerships usually are place-based and context-specific to a city or region, and are designed to drive change across entire systems.

Our community-university collective impact approach aims to guide alignment between existing and new partnership initiatives that support UVic’s key priority areas of climate & sustainability and health & wellbeing. Our community engagement partnerships are guided by the following principles:

• Relevant and respond to common goals and real world problems
• Rooted in transparent and accountable systems and processes
• Sustained by clarity and shared understanding of expectations
• Founded in reciprocity, connecting the university to its partners through shared goals of mutual benefit
• Fluid and a catalyst for innovation and optimal goal impacts
• Align with and advance the objectives of the university’s Strategic Framework

Our advisory committee

Community engagement at UVic is governed by the Community Engagement and Partnerships Advisory Committee. The committee’s mandate is to develop and oversee the implementation of a university-wide strategy to:

• Empower and optimize community engaged learning and community engaged research through fostering strong relationships that are grounded in the sharing of knowledge and expertise to inform and influence positive change with communities and partners (local, regional, national, international)
• Foster university-wide sharing of information and coordination of activities and decision making related to community engagement and partnerships