Working in IDRC’s Governance and Justice Program, 2017 Research Award Recipient Stacey Haugen determined that sponsors and Syrian refugees in rural Canada face the same challenges and reap the same benefits in all provinces.

“I hypothesized that this resettlement and integration could be mutually beneficial for both refugees and rural Canada,” she says. Immersing herself in communities in Nova Scotia, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, Haugen asked rural community sponsors, resettled refugees, immigration experts, and service providers about their experiences.

“This is the first study that has collected the experiences of refugees and sponsors across multiple provinces,” she says.

Of those experiences, she found that refugees enjoyed the warm welcome and social connections available in rural communities, the safety of small communities, and affordable living costs. Their hosts enjoyed the greater cultural diversity and the opportunity to contribute in a concrete way to solving an international crisis. 

Limited services in these communities and lack of transportation to access the services were challenging. But, notes Haugen, some of the women were learning to drive as a result, “something they would never have been allowed to do in Syria.”

“Collecting the experiences of those involved is very important,” she says, “because it gives refugees and community members a voice and provides valuable feedback to the government and service providers.” 

Haugen concludes that rural communities are underused for resettlement and “present an opportunity we can’t afford to ignore.”

Technical solutions aren’t sufficient to guarantee the success of small-scale renewable energy projects in Brazil. But, says 2016 IDRC Research Award recipient Catherine Gucciardi Garcez, that’s where the focus has largely been. “Issues of social inclusion and governance — and enabling local communities to participate in those initiatives — are not as strong,” she says.

“I understand the potential of renewables and some of these technologies are laudable solutions,” says Gucciardi Garcez. “My research shows that the developers were well-intentioned, but they didn't spend enough time getting buy-in from the local community or in getting the community to participate enough to create local ownership. Without engaging the proper stakeholders, we’re at risk of not achieving the kind of impact we’d like to have or that’s needed,” she says.

An engineer, Gucciardi Garcez completed both her master’s and doctorate in environmental policy in Brazil. “I had been living outside of Canada for five to six years before coming to IDRC,” she says. “This was my first professional experience back in Canada after a long time. It's been quite helpful in gaining a professional network, which I had lost.”

For two-time Research Award recipient (2012 and 2014) Ahmed Rashid, his IDRC experience “gave me the confidence to conduct high quality research in social sciences.”

In 2012 Rashid explored the influence of think tanks on policy in Bangladesh, as well as their relationships with international donors and media. In 2014, he explored two-way student exchanges between Canadian and developing-country universities.

“My most memorable experience both times was going to the field,” he says. “As the awardee for the Think Tank Initiative, I traveled to Bangladesh and interviewed representatives from non-governmental organizations, think tanks, donors, and media. For the research on study-abroad programs, I talked to administrators, professors, and students in universities across Canada.”

Rashid found that flexible study-exchange programs with a longer history and clear expectations were the most successful. The opportunity for students to gain “experiences outside the classroom and to undertake collaborative activities with Southern counterparts” was critical and “helped deepen their understanding of issues,” he says. “These programs should be increased.”

Now a development analyst, Rashid considers that “working within the IDRC teams strengthened my program support and management competencies and prepared me for new and more challenging tasks and responsibilities.”  

Graduate education should challenge traditional modes of learning and create new knowledge. In the field of ecohealth, however, that doesn’t always happen, says Mathieu Feagan, a 2014 IDRC Research Award recipient.

Feagan set out to examine how the knowledge of graduate students, young professionals, and early career academics in Canada and Latin America could be better applied to contribute to ecological sustainability and human health. This inquiry built on his PhD research about how current academic training and research often disregard the experiences and skills of experts-to-be and therefore maintain the status quo.

His IDRC project’s working groups, Feagan says, were made up of “incredibly thoughtful people committed to social-environmental justice.” But, he says, “our position as graduate students, interns, and short-term contract holders puts us, in some sense, in competition for a limited number of jobs, few of which are actually designed to support our aspirations for social-environmental justice. Learning about the different ways that we each come to terms with this and take up action in the North and the South, will continue to be a powerful experience for me,” he says.