Relationships

Wellbeing is driven by connections and relationships. So our work is too. 

We draw on the wisdom of people from all walks of life, and we firmly believe that we are stronger together.

“The beauty and peril of cities is that we are all bound together.”

~ New York Times Editorial Board

Key Relationships

  • Folks with lived experience — People who are unhoused, or precariously housed, have participated in our ethnographic research, and continue to provide feedback on the development of different prototypes. Their insights help us fine tune our prototypes into more meaningful concepts.

  • Service providers — Service providers, like Bissell Centre,  The Neighbour Centre and Boyle Street Community Services have generously supported some prototypes, making space and time to work together, connecting us with community members, and opening their spaces to test ideas and gather feedback.

  • Prototype teams and community members — There are some hugely dedicated people continuing to work on some of the prototypes that have emerged through our work:

    • Among them is REACH, which has adopted two of the prototypes and has continued to work on them: The Connector and the Socially Active Business Network. (These have evolved from the 2018 Service Navigator and Socially Conscious Business prototypes.) We continue to support this work and collaborate with REACH. The Edmonton Police Service (EPS) was a learning partner with us on The Connector prototype in 2020.

    • The Old Strathcona Odd Jobs/Neighbours Project was a citizen-led prototype team focused on making community connections between job seekers and businesses in Old Strathcona from 2019-2021. The team was special in that it is fully driven by citizens with a common goal. They also helped the Recover team fine tune some of our approaches and provided us with valuable insights for our evaluation.

    • Aysha Kadour and Emma Ash, two Mitacs students supported the Auricle prototype during the summer of 2021.

  • Catalyst Group — The Catalyst Group is a diverse group of community leaders working to shift the landscape, support prototypes and learning. Their main roles are to act as advisors, networkers, funders and constructive critics. 

  • Post-Secondary Institutions — MacEwan University and University of Alberta staff, faculty and students have contributed to community projects, and we are working with them to build capacity for future prototypes.

  • Other City of Edmonton staff — We are looking at ways we can embed the wellbeing framework into other areas of municipal work. We have worked with these areas of the City’s administration:

    • Community Standards and Neighbourhoods Branch — We worked with staff to host a Participatory City symposium with the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues in March 2021.

    • Community and Recreation Facilities Branch — We worked with staff to learn about ways to improve wellbeing at the Clareview Recreation Centre in 2019.

“How does our thinking change when we realize that 'relationships' are verbs rather than nouns?”

~ Jacquelyn Cardinal, Naheyawin

Consultants

The consultants we partner with have taught us to think beyond transactional relationships. We are on a learning journey together, and we guide each other through this work.

The following consultants have been very influential in our development: 

“Recover does not create a new program or policy until we have designed a new interaction, tested it with a prototype and then evaluated the idea based on impact, feasibility and viability.”

~ Susan Coward, Project Lead

Early Partners 

We wouldn’t have gotten to where we are now without these folks who were on this journey with us in previous years, and who helped us lay the foundation for our current work. There are more than 1000 people who have contributed to this work so far. 

Here are some of them:

  • Folks with lived experience featured in our ethnographic profiles — We have learned so much from these people who generously shared their lives with our researchers. They are at the heart of this work

  • Year 1 and 2 prototype teams

  • Members of the community and external advisory committees

  • Everyone who joined us for our workshops, neighbourhood walks, and co-design sessions

  • MaRS Solutions Lab

  • Civitas

  • ThinkJar Collective

  • Calder Bateman, now ZGM

  • Former core team members: Kate Gunn - original co-lead with Susan Coward, Keren Tang - first project manager, Oksana Niedzielski - strategic planner, Raffaella Loro - strategy and communications lead, Sam Juru - strategic planner, Taisa Ballantyne, Rhea Kachroo and Diana Cretu - our working partners at the Social Innovation Institute, Susan Coward - co-lead from 2017-2021, Ingrid Hoogenboom - partnership broker supporting the Catalyst group from 2020-2021, Miki Stricker-Talbot - intrapreneur leading evaluation, supporting the Expectant prototype and the post-secondary strategy, Emma Ash and Aysha Kadour - our 2021 Mitacs summer students who supported the Auricle prototype

  • Former Catalyst group members: Meghan Dear - CEO and Founder, Localize, and Former Manager ATB X; Keren Tang - Former Participatory City Development Manager, McConnell Foundation; Wanda Costen - Former Dean, School of Business, MacEwan University, Kalen Pilkington - MacEwan University, Sean Melrose - Rhiza Capital, Dan Jones - Retired EPS Inspector, Martin Garber-Conrad - Former CEO at the Edmonton Community Foundation, Jane Bisbee - Social Enterprise Fund

“Instead of ‘caring for others,’ let’s take care of each other.”

~ Dr. Sarah Schulman and Gord Tulloch, The Trampoline Effect

Our Sincere Gratitude

We express our deep appreciation to everyone for sharing their time, wisdom and compassion with us.