Working in good ways

Launched by the office of Community Engaged Learning in May 2021, Working in Good Ways provides an Indigenous-informed framework and resources grounded in consultations with Anishinaabe, Cree, Kichwa, Mapuche, Maya, and Williche community partners in Manitoba, Belize, Ecuador, and Chile, as well as Indigenous and non-Indigenous faculty, staff, and students at the University of Manitoba.

The framework was originally developed by Community Engaged Learning to guide their own work in facilitating community engaged learning and social justice-oriented programming for students, in partnership with systemically marginalized communities. Knowing that community engaged learning practitioners and students often cause hard to Indigenous communities when they approach them with a settler colonial mindset, this project was an effort to reduce these potential harms within their field of practice by providing an alternative to western, institutional, and colonial ways of thinking. 

The reach of Working in Good Ways has since expanded to research, teaching and learning, self-advocacy, professional development, and other community engagement contexts, as well as work with other systemically marginalized communities.

Working in Good Ways is generously supported by the Indigenous Initiatives Fund. 

Working in Good Ways Symposium

Save the date! Join us on May 28, 2026 for the Working in Good Ways Symposium - a celebration of the five-year anniversary of the launch of Working in Good Ways, an Indigenous-informed framework and resources for working with Indigenous and other systemically marginalized communities.

The WIGW Symposium will be an opportunity to learn how the UM community has used Working in Good Ways to transform their community engaged research, teaching, advocacy, and more. Take part in the plenary sessions sharing the impact of Working in Good Ways and the new Researching in Good Ways framework, as well as breakout sessions highlighting how WIGW has been implemented in different contexts at the UM and beyond. 

Registration will open mid-March. More information to come!

Working in Good Ways Symposium

Date: May 28, 2026
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Location: Fort Garry campus
Registration opens: Mid-March

Researching in Good Ways

Researching in Good Ways will support faculty, graduate students, and others who are engaged in or plan to engage in research with Indigenous and other systemically marginalized communities. Consultations with community partners and members of the UM community will capture good and bad practices, experiences, and stories about conducting research with Indigenous and other partners to distill what we hear and learn into a set of principles and good practices that guide the ways we build relationships and conduct research with Indigenous and other systemically marginalized communities at the UM and beyond.

Researching in Good Ways is part of the second phase of the Working in Good Ways initiative, generously supported by the Offices of the Vice-President (Indigenous) and the Vice-President (Research and International).