{"id":101382,"date":"2022-06-20T11:39:22","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T15:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/?p=101382"},"modified":"2022-06-20T11:39:22","modified_gmt":"2022-06-20T15:39:22","slug":"queens-students-work-supports-people-with-disabilities-in-ottawa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/queens-students-work-supports-people-with-disabilities-in-ottawa\/","title":{"rendered":"Queens’ students work supports people with disabilities in Ottawa"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interdisciplinary group of Queens PhD students have completed a project to support Ottawa-based organization ABLE2. <\/span><\/p>\n

The project is part of the PhD-Community Initiative where groups of three to five students from different programs have the opportunity to assist an organization outside of Kingston based on their interests. <\/span>Team leader for the ABLE2 project is Jacqueline <\/span>Giesbrecht, a cultural studies PHD student at Queens. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI have worked with different organizations that support people with disabilities in various settings\u2026It just really was something I\u2019m really interested in, as soon as I saw the project I knew it was the one I wanted to do,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Ottawa, ABLE2 supports over 5,000 people with disabilities become valued members of the community<\/a>. One of the programs ABLE2 offers is the matching program: <\/span>volunteers are known as \"allies\" to the person living with a disability who is known as friend; the ally and friend are paired based on what both parties\u2019 are looking for. <\/span>Giesbrecht says it\u2019s really just a check-in.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou meet one to two hours a week with your match, you can just go out for coffee, some go to different sports games..to the gym. <\/span>It can really depend on what the friend is looking for.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The group of Queens students worked with ABLE2 to find solutions to recruit and retain volunteers for the program.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe main thing we were hearing from volunteers\u2026 they felt a little bit isolated\u2026they wouldn\u2019t be meeting with other volunteers to see how they were finding the program, the largest suggestion was for ongoing training and networking opportunities to keep building the community,\u201d Giesbrecht says.<\/span><\/p>\n

The interdisciplinarity of the student groups was a huge strength to the program, Giesbrecht says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a data person\u2026Line Drapeau had much more experience in that\u2026 We all have different strengths, ways of approaching different topics, Bryan Collins from environmental studies really supported us in the literature view, we all had our areas of strengths we developed in our own disciplines and we were able to come together and make a really great project.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Giesbrecht says this project really sparked her interest in working with an organization.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve learnt a lot about working with an organization in terms of a consulting role, and I\u2019ve realized this is something I\u2019m really interested in doing more broadly\u2026I am interested in continuing in academia as well, but working with an organization really sparked that interest, I think I already knew I had it, but it really solidified.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Giesbrecht is now working on a research project to address barriers for those living with disabilities in faith and spiritual settings.<\/span><\/p>\n

Listen to the full interview with Jacqueline Giesbrecht below:<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interdisciplinary group of Queens PhD students have completed a project to support Ottawa-based organization ABLE2. The project is part of the PhD-Community Initiative where groups of three to five students from different programs have the opportunity to assist an organization outside of Kingston based on their interests. Team leader for the ABLE2 project is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":101528,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57,221],"tags":[15832,6543,1512,15833,15637,3375],"radio":[13056],"origine":[267,13051,269],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101382"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101382"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101568,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101382\/revisions\/101568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101382"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=101382"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=101382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}