Each year, SEPN hosts an annual meeting with its academic co-applicants and collaborators, representatives from organizational partners and contributors, and students/post-doctoral fellows. The meetings focus on reviewing the previous year’s research and strategic planning around the direction of SEPN’s research. Annual meetings include Scientific Committee and Board of Director meetings to review budgets as well as to discuss the best ways to ensure research team member involvement and address challenges that may have arisen during the year.
The annual meeting agenda includes presentations, large group discussions, breakout brainstorming sessions, and team building exercises to allow SEPN members to collaborate on how to design and implement the research and provide feedback on work that is in progress. This approach allows SEPN to identify opportunities to respond to members’ interests and ensure the research results assist our members in supporting and furthering their mandates.
At the Meeting
SEPN Partner Organization, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, hosted Days 1 and 3 of our annual meeting in the Under One Roof Space, a project that aims to bring together progressive organizations in a collaborative work environment to increase capacity to address social and ecological challenges. The team also traveled to La Grange de la Gatineau, a pioneer log cabin on the Gatineau River for workshops on Day 2 of the annual meeting. The team participated in a forest walk over lunch where small groups of team members created sculptures out of materials found during the forest walk.
The 2012-2013 annual meeting was mostly devoted to visioning and planning the program of research using the project proposal, organizational mandates, and academic interests as a starting point. Team members discussed ways in which academics and organizational members could work together productively to design the research methods and carry out the work with a focus on establishing the foundation for the entire duration of the grant.
