Field Placement – Waapihk Research

By Eric G. Lewis

My name is Eric; I am a Liberian and a first-year student in the MDP program at the University of Winnipeg. As a newcomer to Canada who is excited to learn about Indigenous peoples and their cultures, I chose to do my first field placement at Waapihk Research. As an Indigenous research organization, Waapihk conducts research in health and education and performs economic analysis and budgetary planning for First Nations organizations. The outcomes of Waapihk's work inform policy formulation, which subsequently contributes to the improvement of Indigenous people's health and overall well-being.

 

My three-month stay and active engagement at Waapihk as a summer student enabled me to learn about pertinent issues Indigenous peoples face in Canada. Working specifically on the education file, I appreciate the understanding I acquired from researching First Nations education system and the challenges Indigenous people faced in acquiring former education. Part of my role on the education file was designing a data entry template and subsequently entering, analyzing, and producing a comprehensive report on a Waapihk 2022 survey on First Nations education.

 

A second responsibility during my field placement with Waapihk was to research and gather information about school nutrition program. I used the data collected to draft a blog post on the importance of school nutrition program. Given my motivation to learn about Canada's school nutrition program, I conducted a case study examining one of Canada's very successful school nutrition programs benefiting First Nations children in the country's northwestern Territories, the Yukon. My case study also looked at a school nutrition program that pushed the government of Tanzania to enact a school nutrition program policy. As a result of the success of a rural school nutrition program in Tanzania, the government of the east African country enacted and launched the national school nutrition program that made school feeding mandatory in public schools.

 

Eric at the Waapihk office