In Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES), Community Veterinary Outreach, a national charity, is working with UBC researchers and students to reduce barriers to health care by allowing people to access support for themselves alongside their trusted animal companions.

Research shows that pets offer profound physical, emotional and mental health benefits, especially for people facing marginalization. For many, the well-being of their animal takes priority over their own.

CVO's model leverages that bond, providing veterinary care alongside human health services in the same space by creating a setting where people come to care for their animals. The model also opens the door to preventative care, health advocacy, and social support that clients may not otherwise pursue for themselves.

To learn more about this project, we spoke with Kyla Townsend and Kelsi Jasmine from Community Veterinary Outreach (note: Kelsi has since moved on from CVO), as well as members of UBC's animal welfare program: Alex Boo, veterinarian and adjunct professor, and graduate student Alexis Ly.

We discuss how their project got started, the unique way CVO approaches its work, and the good that has come from bringing veterinary and human health services together.

This initiative was supported by the Community University Engagement Support Fund.

In partnership with the Nuxalk Nation, the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at the University of British Columbia is presenting Nuxalk Strong: Dancing Down the Eyelashes of the Sun—the world's first dedicated exhibition of the Nuxalk. The exhibit features over 60 historic treasures from MOA's collections, as well as other museums, private holders, and Nuxalk families. Visitors are invited to connect with belongings made by Nuxalk Ancestors and contemporary Nuxalk artists, and to witness how the Nation is reclaiming and practicing their ways of being.

This exhibition represents a transformative shift in how the Nuxalk Nation engages with museums—not as extractive institutions, but as platforms to share their belief systems, worldviews, and identity with the larger world. To learn more about this groundbreaking collaboration, we spoke with the curators of Nuxalk Strong about the exhibit and the evolving relationship between the Nuxalk Nation and the Museum of Anthropology.

Our guests are Snxakila–Clyde Tallio of the Nuxalk Nation, Jennifer Kramer, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Curator at MOA, and Emily Jene Leischner, Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia and a UBC alumna.

Learn more: https://communityengagement.ubc.ca/news/how-the-nuxalk-nation-is-working-with-ubcs-museum-of-anthropology-to-host-the-first-ever-exhibit-of-their-people/

In Peachland British Columbia, a local conservation group is turning the night sky into a classroom, inviting students and community members to study bats, insects, and the vital ecosystems they share.

Peachland’s Bat Education and Ecological Protection Society, better known as BEEPS, leads the Nocturnal Bat and Insect Survey Project, a hands-on learning opportunity that’s using the magic of the nighttime world to spark curiosity, research and education.

To learn more about this project, we spoke with collaborators Emma Gaudreau, president of BEEPS and Lily Liang, a UBC Okanagan student majoring in ecology, evolution and conservation in biology (Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science) and who also serves as the director of BEEPS.

Visit our website here to learn more about the project and read the episode transcript: https://communityengagement.ubc.ca/news/ubc-okanagan-peachland-beeps-bat-survey-project/