Current Work

Horizons offers services to meet a broad range of organizational needs. We have a strong reputation as a solid team that produces excellent quality work, and we like to have fun together. Our approach is collaborative and flexible to suit the needs of our clients.

Our current work includes:

Evaluation

Nova Scotia Health Authority Mental Health and Addictions Program - Adaptive Mentorship Network Evaluation

Horizons is working with Mental Health & Addictions, Nova Scotia Health to plan and implement a comprehensive, multi-year, multi-method evaluation of pilot Adaptive Mentorship Networks in Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. Our work will include the development of a comprehensive evaluation framework, as well as logic models and theories of change; the development of a detailed plan for implementing the evaluation; and data collection and reporting.

YWCA Halifax - Shift Change: Advancing Women and Equity in the Skilled Trades

The YWCA of Halifax has contracted Horizons to develop and implement a three-year developmental and outcome evaluation for Shift Change. This project seeks to improve women’s economic security and prosperity by addressing the barriers that impede the participation and advancement of women, in all their diversity, in the skilled trades sector. In this work we are all listening and learning by convening networks of partners, engaging folks in reflective learning events and dialogue, as well as piloting and scaling promising practices.

Dalhousie University Schulich School of Law - My Home, My Rights: Exploring Human Rights in Community Living

My Home, My Rights: Exploring Human Rights in Community Living is a research project with the broad goals of fostering inclusive research recognizing persons with intellectual disabilities as experts about their own lives, and to empower persons with intellectual disabilities to be leaders in advocating for their human rights. Horizons is working with the principal investigator, Sheila Wildeman, a professor at Dalhousie University, and Club Inclusion to create resources for inclusive research and advocacy responsive to the imperative “Nothing about us without us”.

We will work with a Community Action Research Team inclusive of persons with intellectual disabilities, collectively engage in research on an issue identified by the Team as important to the realization of human rights in community living, and support the production of an issue-specific advocacy resource based in what the Team learns.

Horizons will support this research team to meet the following specific objectives:

• Engage in participatory action research inclusive of co-researchers with intellectual disabilities (potentially concurrent with autism and/or mental health disabilities);
• Co-create knowledge about human rights – in particular, the rights enshrined in the CRPD - - and how they may be realized in the context of community living;
• Co-produce an issue-specific advocacy resource (print and/or video);
• Generate reflections on our processes to share with others interested in inclusive research and advocacy and to inform an academic article to be co-authored by the Team;
• Launch the advocacy resource, along with accessible summaries of our research findings and processes, at a public forum/celebration of our work; and
• Empower a team of lived experience experts to engage in further research and advocacy.

Project Management

Astor Theatre – Interim General Manager

Horizons is currently fulfilling the responsibilities of interim general manager and supporting the hiring and orientation of a full-time general manager for the Theatre and Town Hall Arts & Cultural Centre in Liverpool.

Fountain of Health Initiative - Project Management

As an innovative organization, FoH continues to work on introducing its tools and messages about brain health, resiliency and dementia prevention to the public. We continue to work with FoH, managing a number of initiatives, including:

• Updating the functionality of the website and app ( funded by the NS Department of Seniors);
• Creating and maintaining a database of healthcare providers and affiliated professionals with an interest in seniors’ mental health;
• Supporting the Atlantic Seniors Mental Health Network, a regional network of the Canadian Coalition for Seniors Mental Health (CCSMH) - the Network’s main purpose is to support a regional community of practice in the mental and physical healthcare of older adults;
• Supporting the national leadership team (Board);
• Creating and updating a listing of knowledge exchange opportunities related to seniors’ mental health and providing to CCSMH for their quarterly newsletter; and
• Supporting the Nova Scotia FoH core team.

Fountain of Health Initiative - New Horizons Optimal Aging Workshops

Fountain of Health received New Horizons for Seniors funding to pilot a new approach with the initiative’s Optimal Aging Workshops, its 4 part series of 90 minute workshops that share the FoH key messages around staying healthy as we age, with an emphasis on brain health and reducing the risks of dementia. Doctors Nova Scotia’s retired physican’s division is a partner in the work and recruited our facilitators.

In this series, the facilitators are retired physicians working in collaboration with community partner organizations. We worked with a FoH team to update the workshop materials, including facilitator guides and slide decks; created and facilitated an orientation day in early May with the retired clinicians; and are working with them and their partners to deliver workshops in their home communities.