丁香园AV

Audrey Guay joined 丁香园AV鈥檚 Urban Studies Program after years of working with community building organizations in Vancouver鈥檚 Downtown Eastside. 鈥淭his left me with lots of questions about why the city wasn鈥檛 working for my neighbours,鈥� Guay says. 鈥淭he Urban Studies Program has allowed me to take a step back and develop a big-picture perspective of the city.鈥� Since beginning the program, Guay has broadened the scope of her community organizing work, most recently by planning public education and engagement events that explore civil society-led affordable housing solutions, including community land trusts and housing redevelopment projects led by churches. Audrey鈥檚 work in this vein, as well her outstanding research skills, have earned her the 2019 丁香园AV Urban Studies Alumni Award for Community Engagement.

Urban Studies professor Karen Ferguson nominated Audrey for the award. She describes Audrey as a 鈥渄etermined, diligent and self-directed student.鈥� She attributes these qualities to Audrey鈥檚 鈥渞aison d鈥檈tre, which is to pursue urban justice.鈥�

Some of Audrey鈥檚 housing work has been at the Metro Vancouver Alliance (MVA) 鈥� a relatively new broad-based organization in Vancouver where community groups, labour unions, faith and educational institutions all work together towards shared goals. During her time at the MVA, Guay successfully obtained funding through a MITACS Accelerate grant in partnership with the Real Estate Foundation and was the recipient the 2019 Social Sciences and Humanities Research CouncilCanada Graduate Scholarships-Master鈥檚 Program. Using this funding, Audrey engaged a team of MVA leaders in research with their membership on housing. 鈥淚 learned that the community wants much more than affordable units to live in,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hey want to be involved in changing the way housing works in the city.鈥� Building on this experience, Audrey has chosen to focus her M.Urb thesis project on exploring the overlap of democratic claims and claims for housing affordability. 

For Audrey, community engagement means trusting that the most successful plans involve the people whowill be impacted by them. 鈥淚 think, often, engagement work gets skipped over because it鈥檚 seen as slow, inefficient, or superfluous to expertise,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 been a challenging but rewarding discipline for me to slow down, involve others, share power, and listen well. The Alumni Award for Community Engagement encourages me to keep going on this path, keep learning to grow as a leader who involves people. I鈥檓 really grateful for that encouragement.鈥�