Hubbub #7 - Community Data - Take 2

Post Covid Community Needs

We’re all living through this difficult time of COVID-19 pandemic and we can only survive by helping each other. CityStudio staff along with UFV students have been working on a project to find out the impact on the community due to COVID. The students along with the Instructor of GEO 252 class, Dr. Afia Raja, have analysed HelpSeeker data to better understand the pre and post COVID community needs. I have enjoyed working on this project along with Dr. Afia and the students. It is always exciting to be part of something that helps our community. During this pandemic, we need everyone’s effort to survive through it and CityStudio has been contributing to that from the beginning itself by taking on these community-based challenge projects. I would say all students actively participated in this project and were well inspired by Dr. Afia Raja. Everyone did a great job in making this project successful.

Each CityStudio project has its challenge introduction, expert presentations, research component and the student showcase.

Below are the testimonials that I had a privilege to collect by being part of class discussions and working closely with Dr. Afia Raja. Students' testimonials that I have gathered shed light on the value of experiential learning in the classroom.

Dr. Afia Raja:

It has always been a pleasure to work with City Studio, this term we experimented with the HelpSeeker Data for Abbotsford as well as Vancouver. Learning statistical skills is a part of the academic process but applying those skills to the real life data and deducing results and making recommendations out of it has always been the goal of GEOG 252 class. I am really happy with this experiential learning process and the way students are making pre and post COVID assessments of the community data set and I hope that we are going to end up with some valuable posters, reports and presentations that would be helpful for all the stakeholders involved. Cheers!

Angela R.:

The term project I completed for this course was looking at Post Covid-19 Community needs and used the information provided by HelpSeeker to complete the project. The variables I was interested in included abuse and mental health, as well as the resources available pre and post pandemic. I conducted analysis through SPSS and GIS in order to see the increase in needs within the community, as well as the level of significance. This experiential learning process was eye opening due to the fact people don't always see the effects of something such as a pandemic, and the overall impact and long-term effects it will have.

Jamie C.:

This term we were working with HelpSeeker data to determine the types of highest community need pre- and post-Covid-19. I have a background in volunteer work with homeless shelters, so I focused my project on variables related to that - basic needs, addictions, and a few economic variables like low-income and employment. I found it really interesting to be able to see the trends in the data through different statistical tests. In the future, I'd love to be able to run this with a little more data; for example, the gender, age, ethnicity, and area of each respondent would have painted a really good picture of which communities in particular were underserviced by current community resources. I hope that the analysis each project provides helps the city to target areas with the highest need post-Covid-19.

Tanisha:

I learned many new points. I always feel happy to do Statistical work and this time I enjoyed the way we used it in our labs and skills. According to my point, project impact defines effects.

Shubhpreet:

For the geo 252 courses, the term project I am going to do is Post Covid Community Needs. For the term project, I am going to use basic needs (heat maps). For conducting the analysis, I will compare the pre- and post-data with the help of graphs and tables. My experiential learning process was great. I learned a lot of things that I did not know earlier. Well, I think my findings will help the community, stakeholders, and the government agencies involved as my data will express how covid affected employment, food, education, etc.

Jessica L.:

This term project was based on the impacts of Covid-19 on community and belonging in Abbotsford. I was interested in the variables belonging to the "Community & Belonging" category as this year a lot of individuals struggled with being apart from community activities. As important as it is to social distance, I wanted to see whether or not individuals valued mental health over physical health, that being, seeing people and doing things in the community to improve their social deprivation.

I conducted the analysis with a partner using the correlation tests to compare all variables against each other, as well as bar graphs. It was interesting interpreting the data and analyzing which months during Covid increased the amount of community and belonging. I have also not worked with this much data, so that was tricky, but manageable and a good learning process. This assignment will help everyone involved by allowing them to see what habitants of Abbotsford are struggling with the most during this pandemic, Based on the data I analyzed, residents are struggling with being alone indoors and are wanting some socialization. Events could be held where participants are socially distanced to allow that sense of community without jeopardizing physical health.

Sarah W.:

Our class had the opportunity of using Help Seeker data to examine community needs pre and post Covid-19. We were able to view data for Abbotsford, BC in many categories such as employment, addiction, eating disorders, abuse, and so many more. For my poster, with my partner Danielle, we decided to focus on the effects of mental health and basic needs to evaluate closer. I think these topics are extremely significant right now, as everyone has struggled with the impacts of Covid-19 in their own way. Keeping your mental health, a priority has been a challenge for many during this pandemic and that is why it was very interesting to take a closer look at the statistics here in Abbotsford. After completing our poster, I think it is very beneficial to view the toll mental health has taken during this past year and I think it is an area that the community could use more support in. I think the first step in supporting the community as a whole would just be to make this knowledge public and emphasize that we are all in this together and that no one is alone. It is easy to feel alone in a time like this, especially depending on an individual's circumstance, but as a community I think it would be helpful to remind everyone that others are dealing with similar effects from the pandemic as well. It was very interesting to examine all of this data and be able to see the hot spots in Abbotsford and where the community is affected most.

Danielle E.:

For this term we were able to create a project that focuses on Pre and Post Covid statistics, this was to get a better view of community needs. It was interesting to see the differences throughout the time of Covid 19. To conduct the analysis, we were given help seeker data and heat maps to give us more insight on how Covid 19 has changed over time. For my project I chose to select mental health as an area of focus and find out more detail on how the community has changed. Before completing this project, I did not carry as much depth into how a community is really affected and all the categories that can be in. After completing this project however, I was able to learn more about basic community needs as well as more about mental health in Abbotsford.

I think the analysis completed will help agencies find a greater depth while looking at the old and current trends presented by Covid 19. I also think it will be helpful to know which areas need more help and development and which parts of the community needs more focus. Thinking long term, I think it will be helpful to know the overall statistics so more studies can be applied, and more resources can be created.

Marisa M.:

For this term project, I decided to focus on certain data that was sexual abuse, domestic violence, and suicide. I chose the topics of sexual abuse, domestic violence, and suicide because I was curious about how many people used HelpSeeker for those topics, and the increase of users during COVID. I realize that with the pandemic and everyone being left in the homes, it may not allow victims that escape from their abusers and I wanted to see what the suicide rates were as well, to see if there may be a correlation between those data points. The experiential learning process was interesting because I didn't realize how many more clicks on the topics there would be, and the drastic changes. It was quite eye-opening. I think my findings will help the communities involved become more aware that there are a lot more people suffering and that maybe we should pay more attention to our neighbours if they are crying out for help in some way. To look for changes in our friends and to help them be safe.

Stefan H.:

This term we had the opportunity to interact with HelpSeeker data in association with CityStudio Abbotsford to help gain a statistical understanding of the most crucial community needs. Currently, in addition to the Covid-19 pandemic, there is a detrimental issue surrounding drug abuse and overdose. Through this project, I was interested in all data that surrounded mental health and addiction-related inquiries. Although the project inspected the downfall of mental health and addiction, I observed the interaction with this data to be quite inspiring and insightful. I found it really interesting to compare my data, especially visuals, to the Covid-19 virus numbers in BC; search terms were tied very closely to virus numbers. Through the use of this analysis, my hopes for the future would be that the city of Abbotsford can reflect upon the areas of their communities that need the most help. I understand that my research will probably not be meticulously analyzed by the city, but hopefully, this will inspire municipal leaders to gain a better understanding of the region’s highest priorities and to find ways to distribute help and resources as effectively and efficiently as possible. While physical well-being is very important, we need to understand that social, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being can be just as important.