CALL FOR PAPERS: MENA Conference "Collaboration for Community Change: Insight, Innovation and Impact"

[Announcement from SCRA-L]

What makes community practice and research effective? What are innovative approaches to community prevention and intervention programs in the region? What are high-impact methods for community work? How can collaboration and partnership improve such processes? This interdisciplinary conference will bring together practitioners, researchers, and students from across the Middle East North Africa region to network, share effective approaches for community change, and build skills and capacities. Initiatives related to timely topics (violence prevention, refugees, sexual harassment, hepatitis C, youth development, education, human trafficking, etc.) are especially encouraged.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Collaboration for Community Change: Insight, Innovation, and Impact

1st Middle East North Africa Regional Conference on Community Psychology

Thursday 24th March - Saturday 26th March, 2016

The American University in Cairo, Tahrir Campus, Cairo, Egypt

http://conf.aucegypt.edu/MENACP

Deadline for Proposal Submission:  Wednesday, 20 January, 2016

This conference will bring together practitioners and academics from across the region to network and to share effective methods for community change. Organized by the Community Psychology program at the American University in Cairo, the conference will showcase innovative community-based initiatives, high-impact community programs, and skills-building and capacity building activities. This is the first conference of its kind to focus on culturally relevant community work in the Middle East and North Africa region.  

Professionals working in the community, community members, researchers, university professors, and students (postgraduate and undergraduate) are invited to propose workshops, presentations, and posters related to the theme of the conference “Collaboration for Community Change: Insight, Innovation, and Impact.” In line with the overall theme, the conference sessions will revolve around three threads:

1) Establishing effective partnerships, including between organizations and stakeholders such as coalition-building and collaborative networks, as well as between organizations and community members, such as use of participatory and empowerment approaches.

2) Finding creative practices and new solutions to tackle systemic issues.

3) Using empirical research and evaluation to design and assess outcomes and impact of community-based initiatives.

Submission guidelines

Selection of workshops, oral presentations and posters will be based on abstracts which summarize the presentation content. Abstracts should be 300-350 words long and may be submitted in Arabic or English. Submissions must contain the name(s), affiliation(s) and email(s) of each author/presenter and must be submitted online at http://conf.aucegypt.edu/MENACP no later than January 20, 2016.

Submission of a proposal does not guarantee acceptance to present at the conference. The proposals will be reviewed and evaluated by experts with relevant backgrounds. Notifications regarding acceptances will be sent by the first week of February. Accepted presenters will be expected to register and pay for the conference if they wish to attend other sessions.

Oral Presentations

Individual oral presentations will be 15-minutes long and will give the opportunity for the speaker to share examples of innovative and effective community research and/or practice. Individual community practitioners and researchers as well as representatives from community organizations are welcome to present. The accepted presentations will be grouped by the conference organizers into panels according to shared themes. Abstracts for proposed oral presentations should demonstrate 1) relevance to one or more of the conference themes and 2) clarity in regards to the work’s purpose, methodology, results, and conclusions reached.

Posters

Poster sessions display information in a visual manner. They also provide an opportunity for personal interaction with the audience and more informal discussions about the community work than allowed in formal presentation or workshop settings. Abstracts submitted for posters that focus on research should detail the research goals, methods, analyses, findings, and implications.  Abstracts for posters that focus on community practice should describe the context, goal(s), approach implemented, and impacts of the effort.

Workshops

Workshops are useful for conference-goers to gain practical skills and experience connections between theory and action. We are inviting proposals for workshop sessions that are 2 hours in length. Workshops should encourage experiential and active participation of attendees. Abstracts should 1) describe the goals of the workshop - specifically the skills and competencies that will be gained by participants, 2) explain the workshop format, and 3) note the optimal number of participants in the session. Applicants are welcome to submit two separate workshop proposals if they wish to present more in-depth training, in which the second workshop would represent more advanced content or build upon the first workshop.

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Andrea Emanuel, PhD

Assistant Professor

Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Egyptology

The American University in Cairo

andrea.emanuel@aucegypt.edu