Navigating complex challenges: Map the System begins

By Auz Momin

As 2024 begins, the sixth annual Map the System competition is in full swing at the University of Waterloo. The Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement team is facilitating events for students to learn more about the competition with the help of Jordan Li, this year’s Map the System Campus Lead.  

The Center for Peace Advancement at Conrad Grebel University College aspires to advance innovative understandings and practices of peace by promoting collaboration between students, researchers, innovators, and partner organizations. One way this mission is fulfilled is through the Map the System competition, where students map out, explore, and understand complex social or environmental issues through systems thinking.  

Jordan Li was a previous Map the System participant and part of the winning team at UWaterloo last year. “Participating in Map the System was a fantastic opportunity for me to feel like I had a platform to explore a topic and cause that I genuinely cared about – the preservation and restoration of wetlands,” said Jordan. She found that participating in this competition gave students the “opportunity to develop the tools to analyze the process of solving complex problems in a more systematic and nuanced way.”  

At an “Ask me Anything” session with Jordan, students learned more about the basics of the competition and the steps they need to take before registration closes on January 31. Students also networked with Center for Peace Advancement team members during Velocity’s Innovation Open House. A student mixer hosted by GreenHouse gave students the opportunity to meet other students and form a team to compete.  

Six community partners attended the GreenHouse event to pitch complex problems they are seeking to address with the support of Map the System student teams. These partners included Grief Matters, Just Outcomes Consulting, Mennonite Central Committe Ontario (MCC), Med Melanin, Project Ploughshares, and the UWaterloo Sustainability Office.  

In their quest to walk alongside workplaces navigating organizational change, Just Outcomes Consulting, a start-up in the Grebel Peace Incubator, is looking to understand the specific barriers and potential solutions for more effective relationship strategies in the context of Canadian workplaces.  Michelle Jackett, a senior consultant at Just Outcomes, said Map the System “allows us to arrive at a solution that reflects a real need, and which can have transformative impacts. If students can practice thinking this way now, it will set them up for success moving forward as they navigate systems in their life and work.”  

Grief Matters, a national organization that aims to increase knowledge, skills, and values about grief, wants to look closer at the effects of grief on Canadian University students, how universities can provide support, and social norms which may prevent students from seeking support. “The opportunity to connect students to real life issues is a valuable one,” noted Susan Cadell from Grief Matters.  “Everything works within systems. The more students understand that, and increase their ability to navigate and change systems, the stronger they will be.”  

The global relief, development, and peacebuilding organization MCC, a Core Collaborator in the Centre for Peace Advancement, presented two issues during the student mixer. With a focus on the mass incarceration of Indigenous women, Scott Morton Ninomiya explained that “Despite the growing awareness of the impacts of residential schools, many people in Canada don’t understand how that legacy is perpetuated in the prison pipeline and mass incarceration – or what to do about it.” The second challenge, presented by Laurie Warkentin, was to “better understand the incentive structures and feedback loops that reinforce resistance to Truth and Reconciliation efforts with Indigenous people within faith communities in Ontario.” MCC asked participants to inform the engagement, relationship building, and education strategies that MCC Ontario facilitates. 

Med Melanin, a digital, health platform which aims to reduce the rate of misdiagnosis and improve the consulting experience for women of colour, presented a challenge that highlights how “women of colour disproportionately experience a higher rate of misdiagnosis and negative consults.” Yvonne Osagie, founder of Med Melanin said that "it’s important to think of social and environmental issues from a system thinking perspective because of the complexities. There is never one reason it is taking place. There are multiple different reasons with multiple different factors with multiple different incentives.”  

Project Ploughshares, a Canadian peace research institute based in the Centre for Peace Advancement, presented a challenge related to the impact of climate change from the lenses of peace and security within Canada and internationally. “This is a big mission that means different things to different people and can only be accomplished by working together as a community,” explained Jessica West of Project Ploughshares. “There are many ways in which individuals can contribute by pursuing their own passions and building on their lived perspectives.” The Map the System project will directly contribute to the work of Project Ploughshares on climate, peace, and security. 

The University of Waterloo’s Sustainability Office wants to achieve zero waste by 2035, and to achieve this goal they would like all who work, live, and study on campus to be part of the solution. The Sustainability Office is looking for Map the System participants to find underlying issues and propose solutions to help meet this goal.  

This competition gives students the chance to make a real impact on social and environmental issues globally and contribute to building a more sustainable and peaceful world. Connect with Jordan via email at mapthesystem@uwaterloo.ca or visit the Map the System website for more details.