Foundation Funding

We are proud to announce that Afield and David J. Roberts of the University of Toronto were awarded a Connaught Fund Community Partnership Research Program grant of $135, 638.

Grounding for the project largely comes from Afield co-director Kai Wood Mah’s work on children and youth in Toronto that is both historical and contemporary. Norms for housing Toronto children and youth in custodial care goes back to the nineteenth century when children and youth, demographically, looked very different than they do now in the most diverse city in North America. These norms also infuse international instruments impacting IRY (i.e., unaccompanied and separated) like the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) as well as Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (2001).

The project is used to investigate housing provision for Independent Refugee Youth in Toronto (i.e., unaccompanied and separated). Originally conceptualised by Afield as a service design research project for government, project methodologies for the Connaught project reflect Afield’s practice at the intersection of design and social science research. Possible outcomes for this research-creation project will vary—from rethinking housing typologies for children and youth in custodial care to designing actual housing for partnering organisations housing Independent Refugee Youth.