Imagine a course that lets you explore the lively cafés of downtown Kitchener and participate in urban community life – and that also encourages you to design new initiatives that harness the vibrant and socially engaged communities you find in the heart of the city, while addressing some of the critical challenges one frequently encounters in an urban setting. You will find all this and more in CMEG305, the capstone course for the Community Engagement (CE) Option. In this 1.0-credit course you will be immersed in a placement (coordinated by The Working Centre, Laurier’s partner in the CE Option) for six hours per week (for the 12-week course). You will also debrief that immersive experience weekly – and learn from it. Plus, you will design a community enterprise with your colleagues.

Creating a new community venture requires a deep exploration of the issue you seek to address and determining what has been successfully and unsuccessfully attempted in the past. How might some of the community challenges be creatively engaged? What venture might you launch to highlight one critical issue?

Here are some recent ventures developed by CMEG305 students:

• Fast Fashion: Textile recycling and repurposing, plus developing an educational program for high school students.
• Reskilling at Laurier: Relearning the skills that have sustained our forebears, from preserving food to repairing your own clothes and many more.
• Sustain-a-Game: A very lively interactive card and discussion game that challenges the way you think, while having fun (to be played at the all-day initiation to CMEG300 every year).

Warning: Almost every student who has taken the CE Option has said “the CE Option has changed my life.” It could change yours too!