Dr. Jiaying Zhao and community partner Foundations for Social Change are the recipients of UBC’s Community-University Engagement Support Fund.
This funding supports Dr. Jiaying Zhao (she/her) and Foundations for Social Change‘s New Leaf project, the world’s first program evaluating the impact of cash transfers to individuals experiencing homelessness. For the 2023/2024, the team plans to use Photovoice – an arts process and method of working with people in communities that are typically underrepresented or excluded from decisions that affect their lives. The project will document a day in the life of these community members, and initiate dialogue about what is significant to the community.
“I'm incredibly grateful for the generous funding from CUES to support the Ambassador Program of our New Leaf Expansion Project to better serve marginalized populations.”
UBC’s Community-University Engagement Support (CUES) Fund supports partnerships that will benefit communities and advance collaborative research, teaching, and learning across the province. Paid directly to community partners, CUES funding reduces financial barriers and prioritizes reciprocal, inclusive engagement so all communities — especially those that have been and continue to be underserved, marginalized, or excluded — can benefit.
- Community Partner: Jerome Parades Heidemann, Foundations for Social Change
- UBC Partner | Faculty: Dr. Jiaying Zhao, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, UBC Vancouver
The New Leaf project is the world’s first program evaluating the impact of cash transfers in empowering individuals experiencing homelessness to move back into housing, regain food and financial security, and improve their physical and psychological well-being. A collaboration between UBC professors and Foundations for Social Change, the project will provide 200 individuals experiencing homelessness unconditional cash transfers and other non-cash supports. To address the lessons learned and better engage the community in our research, we established an Ambassador Program of people with lived experience that contribute to the project’s ethical and effective development, implementation and knowledge mobilization, build trusting relationships with participants, and work with them on mini-projects that amplify their voices.
As one of its activities, we are embarking on a new project for 2023/2024 that will use Photovoice – an arts process and method of working with people in communities that are typically underrepresented or excluded from decisions that affect their lives. The project will document a day in the life of these community members, and initiate dialogue about what is significant to the community.
Jiaying Zhao is the Canada Research Chair (t2) in Behavioural Sustainability, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. As the director of the Behavioural Sustainability Lab at UBC, she uses cognitive principles to design behavioral solutions to address sustainability challenges. In reaching this goal, she aims to understand how cognitive mechanisms generate behavior, and more broadly, to use behavioral insights to inform the design and the implementation of public policy. For more information about her research, please visit: http://zhaolab.psych.ubc.ca.
