Re-thinking Public Engagement Approaches: Lessons From a Research Project

Sydney Piggott (she/her) is a social impact leader, researcher and advocate for gender equity and social justice on a global scale. She is currently the Senior Social Impact Manager at Shopify where she champions education programs for underrepresented youth in tech and entrepreneurship with partners around the world. Before joining Shopify, she held leadership positions at Elevate and YWCA Canada. She is also a member of the Equal Futures Network Advisory Committee and the Reach Alliance Advisory Council. Sydney has been a subject matter expert in several international forums including the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, Women Deliver, Inter-Parliamentary Union Conference for Young Parliamentarians and RightsCon. She brings an intersectional feminist lens to all her work informed by her proud Afro-Caribbean heritage.

Kai Audi is a Kenyan queer, nonbinary feminist, activist and creative. They channel their skills and passion for advocacy and storytelling towards advocating for an all-inclusive world where LGBTQ+ persons are free to exist as their most authentic selves. This is evident in their work as a program coordinator at Jinsiangu, an organization that works to enhance the lives and wellbeing of intersex, transgender and gender non-conforming (ITGNC) persons in Kenya; and as a community organizer at Queerhive Kenya, a youth-centered, creative and social support organization for lesbian, bisexual and queer (LBQ) womxn and gender non-conforming persons. They have also been involved in a number of collaborative creative projects such as “Meanwhile” by the Qintu Collab, “Rainbow Childhoods” by GALCK, “New Rain” by Minority Womyn in Action, and “Emergence” by Holaafrica.

About John: Master’s degree in Peace and Reconciliation, option: Natural Resources, Environment, Peace and Sustainable Development from the Catholic University of Bukavu (CUB), Bachelor’s degree in Law from the Université Officielle de Bukavu (UOB). University instructor and researcher here in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He’s also an activist for human rights and environmental issues and have contributed several articles on the subject. National Coordinator of the non-profit organization Front Commun pour la Protection de l’Environnement et des Espaces Protégés, or FCPEEP-RDC, which operates on several diverse issues, including environmental protections, gender equality, human rights, food sovereignty, sustainable agriculture, and the rights of women and girls, as well as those of other marginalized groups, such as Pygmy Indigenous peoples. Their website, www.fcpeep-rdc.org, includes some descriptions of our actions on the ground. National Focal Point of Civil Society Organizations in DRC accredited to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Focal point of the Kabare/Sud-Kivu/DRC area from the Société Civile Environmentale et Agro-Rurale du Congo.

Marie-Eve Marleau has worked for the past fifteen years within social movements against extractivism and for ecological justice. She is the Coordinator of the Comité pour les droits humains en Amérique latine (CDHAL), an international solidarity organization based in Montreal that works to defend and promote human rights in reciprocity with social movements and communities in Latin America in the fight for social, environmental, economic and cultural justice. CDHAL’s actions contribute to developing a critical analysis of oppressive structures in our society and in international solidarity work, as well as to building awareness and mobilization among Quebecers.

Judyannet Muchiri (she/her) works at the intersection of gender justice, civic participation and digital technologies. She has experience doing advocacy work, researching and writing on these areas in Canada, Kenya, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Cameroon, and Uganda. In addition to being a policy officer with the Inter-Council Network (ICN), Judyannet is completing a PhD in Sociology and co-leading the Africa Community Engagement (ACE) Hub.