How can community-university engagement address family violence prevention? One child at a time.

Abstract

Family violence in Indigenous communities is one of the most pressing policy challenges of our times. This issue is highly related to the stressors caused by the disadvantaged socio-economic circumstances of Indigenous peoples, such as poverty and unemployment, and community trauma attributed to colonization and a loss of culture. This article is a case study based on the evaluations of four community-university engagement initiatives for Indigenous children, youth, and their families at a small inner-city university. It documents six principles for policy development used to engage students in their education and to begin to perceive themselves as high school and post-secondary graduates. These programs are just a few examples of how a small inner-city university took an imaginative community development approach to promoting social change, with each program tantamount to an anti-violence strategy.