WORKSHOP LED BY STACEY DAKIN & VÉRONIQUE CHURCH-DUPLESSIS
Stacey Dakin is an experienced community convenor with a collaborative leadership style who loves to see and experience the world. She joined Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada in 2017, playing a critical role in the inception of the Canadian Mentoring Partnership (CMP). As Managing Director, Stacey is responsible for leading her team and sector stakeholders through the conceptualization, development and management of a pan-Canadian mentoring movement. Stacey is excited by the opportunity to build and develop CMP into a backbone collective impact organization. ​Based in Montréal, she brings over 15 years’ experience in strategic development, change management, and capacity building to the CMP.  She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Human Relations from Concordia University and certifications in Project Management, Communication, Conflict Resolution & Mediation, and Business Management.

Véronique Church-Duplessis leads the Canadian Mentoring Partnership’s research agenda, with a focus on mapping the mentoring landscape in Canada and identifying service gaps. She is also a co-lead of the Canadian Mentoring Research Network. Véronique is committed to CMP’s knowledge mobilization goals and is eager to use the new research to bridge the gap between academic researchers and community organizations. Prior to joining CMP, Véronique led programs focused on promoting healthy relationships for youth and violence prevention. Véronique holds two degrees in history, a PhD from the University of Toronto and a Master of Arts from the Université de Montréal.

ABSTRACT
Starting question or hipothesis:
Is it really possible to get stakeholders on the same page ? How do we make connections between organizations so that they can create synergies and efficiencies? During this workshop participants will explore the concept of Collective impact and have a chance to work through some real life examples in order to open their minds to how they can inspire collaboration.  Participants will walk away with an understanding of what is involved when building a mentoring movement and some tools to help them along the way.

Goal of the session:

1. Why Canada needed to engage in community assessments and stakeholder engagement and why you should to;
2. How the Canadian Mentoring Partnership co-created their research plan with both internal and external stakeholders;
3. Preliminary results from the Pan-Canadian research project undertaken in 2019.

Participants will leave with:

1. A better understanding of how colloaboratiely to set research objectives, define terms and engage stakeholders in the development of research projects and initiatives;
2. Obtain tools and ideas on how they might adapt research initiatives done in other jursidictions to better suit their local reality.

About the session:
This workshop will provide:

• Theorectical concepts during presentations;
• Hands on tactical experiences during ice breaker and group work;
• Take aways presentations will be shared for future reference and some tools will be developed to assist participants both during the workshop and when they return back to their jobs.

The workshop will consist of presentations by facilitator(s), group conversations, report backs and unfold in the following manner:
Presentation: Introduce speaker and the Canadian Mentoring Partnership (10 mins)

Group Ice breaker to set to tone for the session (10 mins) Participants will be asked to identify their goals for the session, why did they choose this workshop over another?

Presentation: Background and overview of Canada’s two major mentoring research projects initiated in 2019, this will highlight the questions the CMP had and how they went about making decisions (20 mins)

• Setting research objectives and goals
• Identifying the “right” Stakeholders
• Sorting through “Must haves” for capturing the landscape and mapping the gap
• Determining the primary audience for findings/information generated by this work
• Terminology- E.g. how do we define “mentoring”

Group work and report back (25 mins)
Participants will be asked to form groups and answer the following questions (these may be refined as the workshop is fully fleshed out);

• How do they define mentoring?
• How do you identify mentoring service providers?
• What age range defines youth?
• What stakeholders would you engage and why?
• How do you engage youth in this type of research project?

Presentation: What decisions did the Canadian Mentoring Partnership make and how they we went about engaging stakeholders and research participants. Overview of preliminary findings  (10 mins)

Discussion: How do we take this data and make changes in our local communities? What have you done? What would you have liked done in your own communities? (10 mins)