Report

The rising costs of hydro places a financial burden on low-income households. The Ontario Electricity Support Program (OESP) was launched to help relieve the pressure of these rising costs in Ontario. However, within the City and County of Peterborough there has been low enrollment in the subsidy program, representing a missed opportunity for individuals struggling with energy poverty. The objective of this research project was to identify the barriers that low-income households face when enrolling into the OESP, in order to provide recommendations to improve uptake. Previous literature pertaining to the review of low enrollment in various government subsidies suggests that individuals face barriers, due to the application process, lack of promotion, and the multiple steps required to receive the benefit. Our results indicate that individuals within the City and County of Peterborough experience similar barriers, which have caused the low enrollment into the OESP, and includes recommendations to address the barriers that low-income Ontario households are facing.

The purpose of this project was to highlight the unique collaboration of Forensic Science and Community-Based Research at Trent University facilitated by the Trent Community Research Centre (TCRC). A review of literature was conducted, and interviews of hosts, TCRC staff, faculty members and students were conducted as a means of gaining personal perspectives on the history and experience of the program. The course began in the academic year of 2009-2010 and that the idea of a collaboration between these two fields came from a friendly conversation between a TCRC staff member and the Trent faculty supervisor. In addition, most of the projects conducted address research themes of a social nature due to the criminal foundation of Forensic Science. In general host organizations were positively impacted by the projects conducted, using results to implement new best practice ideas and make positive change in the local community. Finally the Forensics student gained a unique learning experience that had a positive affected on their choices after completing their undergraduate degrees. The findings of this study could be used to create a best practices guide for Community-Based Research in Forensics Science, or to create the foundation for expansion of this program.

The topic of this project is the discipline of university-based community-based research, more specifically within the context of the Trent Community Research Centre. Its purpose is to review the archive of TCRC projects to find those of notable quality that may be highlighted at the TCRC's 25th anniversary conference, and to uncover what trends have developed within TCRC projects over the years. Interviews were conducted with host organizations, Trent faculty, and former TCRC staff. Ongoing archival research in addition to the interviews emphasized specific trends, including sociopolitical, environmental, economic and cultural. Analysis of these trends helps to situate the TCRC within the broader field of community-based research.

Abstract: OPIRG Peterborough celebrates its 40th anniversary of social and environmental justice activism in the Peterborough community. As a continuation of Rihannon Johnson's History of a Student-Led Organization I, this project chronicles the development of OPIRG Peterborough during the 1990's. Using sociologist Alan Sears' 'infrastructure of dissent' paradigm, each chapter explores a different social and environmental campaign that OPIRG Peterborough was involved with during the 1990's. In doing so, the historical evolution of the organization is traced. At the theoretical level, however, the infrastructure of dissent (and its implications for social mobilization) is re-evaluated in every chapter, culminating in a conclusion that posits that the infrastructure of dissent may be more applicable to the study of social movements than Sears originally conceptualized. By contextualizing OPIRG Peterborough as part of a wider student movement in Chapter One, it is seen that the infrastructure of dissent has a professional 'branch,' one that is necessary for the survival of grassroots organizations. By analysing the historical development of the Peterborough Ecology Garden in Chapter Two, it is argued that the infrastructure of dissent has the capacity to homogenize the organizational identities of environmental justice organizations that may otherwise appear fractured. In Chapter Three, the capacity for the infrastructure of dissent to foster individual identities within OPIRG Peterborough working groups is discussed. By developing these particular facets of the infrastructure of dissent, it is argued that the infrastructure itself may be key to formulating effective social mobilizations outside of strictly labour-political dichotomies.