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University of New Brunswick (UNB) kinesiology professor Dr. Jackie Oncescu witnessed the hardships caused by unjust systems for many years while she worked with equity-owed residents of adverse communities.

It wasn’t until she viewed those injustices through a personal lens that she would fully understand their impact. Her professional life and family life started to mirror each other when a family member experienced poverty, addiction and homelessness.

“There was this personal and professional dynamic at play that cultivated a passion and a determination to do this research,” she said.

She felt drawn to supporting those oppressed and marginalized by the systems designed for privilege.

Inspired by the influence that sport and recreation had on her own rural-town upbringing, she centered her career around using sport and recreation as a catalyst for cohesion and connection in small communities experiencing adverse conditions.

“My research program addresses the priority areas of poverty reduction through social inclusion, which for me is in the context of sport and recreation, because if done well, that’s a potential site for people to feel a sense of belonging,” said Oncescu.

“But it has to be reimagined.”

Over the past six years, Oncescu has been working at UNB to build Reimagining Access, a research program that uses innovative methods to connect equity-owed residents to their communities through sport, recreation and leisure.

“We use human-centred design and participatory action research approaches where people with lived experiences have the power, the skills and the resources to create the solutions that would best support their participation,” said Oncescu.

Reimagining Access’s approach involves facilitating a partnership between an equity-owed resident(s) and a sport and recreation practitioner from a small, rural New Brunswick town.

With the help of the Reimagining Access team, the pair work together to identify a specific problem in their community around access to recreation and sport activities. They then go through a six-week codesign process where they create the solution that they would like to see happen. The Reimagining Access research team then helps the pair implement their codesigned solution within their community.

“Sport and recreation are a luxury. It is a pay to play society, so if you live in poverty or low income, people often feel they don’t deserve to play because they haven’t earned it,” said Oncescu.

“You can make anything free, and you can create spaces for people to go, but if they don’t feel like they belong or deserve it, it can be really hard for them to show up.”

“Through the process of having them co-design what they want, they feel that they get to contribute, that they deserve it, that it’s for them. The process of co-design creates a sense of belonging.”

The research project has been implemented in five communities throughout New Brunswick, with a successful tactic in St. George.

The St. George tactic began in 2022, when Oncescu and her team began working with equity-owed resident and St. George newcomer Hope Twinamatsiko.

“In 2018, I relocated here from Uganda with my family – my husband and our two children, who were teenagers,” said Twinamatsiko. “We were so lost.”

Of the many hardships that Twinamatsiko faced during her first few years in the small town, one of the most difficult to bear was watching her son, once an active athlete and an extrovert at heart, face barriers that prevented him from participating in sports.

Twinamatsiko says that the extremely high cost, lack of transportation options and difficulty finding information about athletic organizations made it near impossible for her son to join teams.

“What we went through, I wouldn’t want to see another person going through that,” she said.

After slowly settling into St. George, Twinamatsiko was recruited by the Reimagining Access research group, where she was introduced to YMCA manager and UNB alum Paige Scott (BRSS'17).

Twinamatsiko and Scott, who was born and raised in St. George, began working together to identify an issue they wanted to overcome within the community.

Viewing Saint George from two very different perspectives, Twinamatsiko and Scott both saw a problem with the lack of accessibility to unstructured recreational opportunities for vulnerable community members.

“Hope and Paige are the perfect example of why the co-design works,” said Oncescu.

“Paige has a mandate to support people being engaged in recreation in the region, and she wants to support all people,” said Oncescu.

“But Hope represents a population that often doesn't have access to community sport and recreation because newcomers often lack the financial resources, transportation and access to information to support participation.”

“Hope brings to Paige the lived experience of being a newcomer, which Paige does not have,” she said.

“Together, they have the shared knowledge to better create supports that could have a meaningful impact.”

This February, Twinamatsiko and Scott hosted a community pop-up alongside Reimagining Access in St. George’s Magaguadavic Center. The event included games, snacks, activities and play boxes filled with toys and gear for all ages and abilities.

There were prizes from local stores and food from local restaurants. There were organized transportation options to and from people’s homes, and special activities for participants with mobility issues. Nearly 60 equity-owed community members attended.

“Every comment and remark that day was positive,” said Scott. “We need to see more of this in the community; we need to build on these opportunities for people and create more spaces for them to get out and collaborate.”

“I want to see this project expand, not only here but in other communities too,” said Twinamatsiko. “We don’t need millions of people; we just need a few people who can bring others together, people like Paige, people who are willing and committed.”

As the team continues to connect with the most excluded, disenfranchised and the marginalized residents of rural New Brunswick towns, they hope to reconcile relationships between those who are in power and those who aren’t.

Their goal, they say, is to reimagine residents’ belonging within their community.

“We can't go into complex social issues with the solution from a top-down perspective. We need to create safe spaces for the solutions to emerge with those most impacted in our communities,” said Oncescu.

“The residents and practitioners coming together – trying, learning, growing – that is where the answers are.”