Hannah Chan

Project Description:

Canadian youth are increasingly exposed to competing narratives and perceptions about homelessness through family, friends, social and digital media, and their own personal experiences. These conceptions shape how young people understand housing insecurity, the accompanying stigmas, and their respective community responses. Despite the significant attention being given to the housing crisis, there remains a critical gap in the kinds of educational resources available to explore this pervasive social issue. Our proposed outreach initiative focuses on bridging this educational gap by developing and sharing evidence-based learning materials with secondary students that will help foster meaningful dialogue about homelessness among youth in Canada. In my role, I worked for an amazing research team (NIMBY to Neighbour) that has been developing curriculum for high school students about the many competing perceptions of homelessness. I primarily engaged with knowledge mobilization with this team. So far, I have created a newsletter in Canva for this research team in the hopes of sharing evidence-based learning materials with other educators, researchers, and stakeholders. I have also reviewed key materials, such as the documentary created by this research team and I helped to identify key themes. I attend monthly meetings held by the research team to support their development of curriculum on homelessness for high school students.

---

The Dean’s Award for Research Excellence (DARE) - Undergraduate enables our students to meaningfully engage in research projects supervised by LA&PS faculty members. Find out more about DARE.