York U.'s Centre for Research on Work and Society Lands SSHRC Grant
York U. Director to Lead Unique Academic-Community-Labour Team to Examine and Help Erase Barriers to Education and Employment for Marginalized Young People

TORONTO, December 3 1999 -- The Director of York University's Centre for Research on Work and Society (CRWS) has won a national grant to lead an integrated research and training project that will isolate and try to eradicate race and gender barriers that often prevent marginalized young people from pursuing post-secondary education and securing promising employment.

CRWS Director and York University social scientist Dr. Carla Lipsig-MummÈ is heading up the project, called Bridging the Solitudes. The three-year project received $600,000 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) which this week announced 22 grants under their new Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) program. Academic, community, and labour partners are matching that contribution. Bridging the Solitudes is unique in combining the work of university researchers with community groups and labour unions to bring marginalized young people into university and college and to create a path for them to enter occupations and professions to which they currently do not have access.

Bridging the Solitudes will link education to employment in a specially designed curriculum and through summer internships mentored by the community agencies and unions. Under a pilot project called Education and Training for the Marginalized Young, 60 students -- in high school or not, up to 25 years of age -- who would not otherwise pursue post-secondary studies will have the opportunity to study any available program at York University and/or Seneca College. They will also benefit from co-op placements which will better prepare them for the labour market. Students will take a work placement course, for credit and wages, working with a union, community organization or other non-profit organization either during the summer or during their second or third year. They will also be eligible for financial support, and will participate in research undertaken by the project. Lipsig-MummÈ says this combination of education and experience will not only help these students individually, it may also further their development as community leaders and role models.

The project will draw on the expertise of 19 leading academics from York and Seneca College, from disciplines as diverse as education, economics, sociology, business, urban geography, labour studies, political science, women's studies; nine community organizations including the Toronto District School Board and the York/Westview Partnership; and four trade unions (Canadian Auto Workers; Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union; Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation; and the Public Service Alliance of Canada).

Lipsig-MummÈ said that opening access to higher education and professional training for marginalized young people is key, but it is not enough. Barriers continue to hamper their full-time participation in the labour market, she says, regardless of their post-secondary achievement. "Accessibility is a chain whose first link is preparing for and entering post-secondary education," said Lipsig-MummÈ. "The second link is the education itself, and the final link is entry into the labour market."

She said that while the Greater Toronto Area is the most multicultural and multilingual area in Canada, that reality is not reflected in the ethnic profile of key occupations and professions in the city and in higher education. New Canadians and First Nations' youth, as well as other marginalized groups, are over-represented in dead-end, low-waged jobs.

Bridging the Solitudes will also advance cutting-edge research on linking education and training to innovative paths into the labour market. The research is organized around five themes. Taken together, these centre on the tenacity of barriers to education and employment equity, new practices in linking education access and labour market access in Canada and internationally, new roles for community organizations in shaping the potential for success, emerging trade union strategy for intervention in these areas, and a critical evaluation of bridging's own successes and failures.

"We intend our educational pilot project and the research it generates to be locally relevant, and nationally replicable," said Lipsig-MummÈ. "The research team brings together specialists on the study of work and education, access and equity. It is widely representative of two important but often overlooked segments of the practitioner research community -- the labour market community groups and the trade unions. Further, it brings these two groups into sustained collaboration with academic researchers and the marginalized young," said Lipsig-MummÈ.

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For more information, please contact:

Sine MacKinnon
Senior Advisor/Director, Media Relations
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22087
sinem@yorku.ca

Dr. Carla Lipsig-MummÈ
Director, Centre of Research for Work and Society
York University
(416) 736-5612
crws@yorku.ca
YU/138/99