Project description:

W.O.R.D. is looking for a student to help us build an interactive website. We feel that it is integral for W.O.R.D. to have a strong online presence not only for its ability to spread the word about our mandate, but also to complement the multimedia components of our programming. During the three months of the project, the student's role will be to evaluate and assist in facilitating the workshops with program participants, in partnership with the Atwater Library Digital Literacy Project (DLP), on website development. To conclude, an evaluation report of the workshops will be required elaborating on the following points:

• The effectiveness of the workshops, successes and failures;
• Collection of feedback from the participants;
• Suggestions on how the workshops could be improved;
• An evaluation of the applied usefulness of website development knowledge among the participants.

Project description: The Judicial Review is a federal program established in the 1970s in response to criticism of right-wing sentencing policies.  Fifteen years into a sentence, a prisoner may pass before the Judicial Review to earn a reduction in their minimum sentence – i.e. an earlier date for parole eligibility.  However, the Judicial Review program has undergone changes and is inconsistently applied across provinces. 

This project would address a critical lack of knowledge about the Judicial Review, by producing information valuable to prison justice organizers, to the public, and to incarcerated individuals and their families.   

We are seeking an overview as to how public policy has influenced incarceration levels in Canada over the past fifty years to help us contextualize other work we are doing on HIV prevention in prisons.  This request does not entail primary research but rather the collection and synthesis of a broad range of information on related topics: the effects of Canadian drug policy, the advent and role of alternative sentencing strategies, etc.

We also realize the broad nature of “public policy” as a topic and are open and receptive to proposals of research with a narrower focus.

Project Description: The student will perform First Nation placename mapping across Quebec in various regions on a Geographic Information System (GIS) software platform. This research will contribute to a mapping project flowing since 1994 from Eco-Montreal Tiohtiake Green Mapping and Tsi Tetsionitiotiakon Sustainability Rooted in Heritage. Placename mapping has been in process since 1999, with hundreds of students and Kanien'keh citizens. Placenames hold a key to understanding sustainable economy and ecology, the tens of thousands of years of heritage of each place in our region, and bring us understanding of the nature of this place and people.

Description of final product: Students will be working on teams under the direction of First Nations & organizing committees in regional networks across Quebec to research, compile & express heritage data given the local and national objectives of First Nation organizers. First Nations will determine the final use of the data collected. Ethical permissions must be achieved with local First Nation organizing committees. Kahnawake (across the Mercier bridge) has GIS to connect the Band Council with other community organizations having access.