This article provides a detailed description of the in-field experience of using community mapping as a participatory action research tool with youth. It describes a case study, the Youth Friendly Health Services project (YFHS project), in which a team of Vancouver youth carried out a participatory evaluation of health clinics by mapping out criteria for evaluation and then creating an evaluation tool based on the maps that were created. Community mapping proved to be an inclusive and appropriate tool to engage youth perspectives. The major challenges faced in the process were in determining how to represent and act upon the findings of the mapping process. Their experience suggests that while such innovative data collection tools such as community mapping can successfully engage youth, not just as participants, but as facilitators of research, they must be accompanied by equally creative and innovative approaches to formulating research results and outcomes.
AbstractVancouver's successful bid for the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games took place at a transformational moment for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). In the first decade of this century, the IOC began to require host cities to address a much wider range of local impacts of the 'global Games', and to undertake planning initiatives to ensure maximum local social inclusion. In this article, we present a case study of the policies and principles of social inclusion used by the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) in preparing for the 2010 Games. We use key informant interviews, document analysis and participant observation to study a specific programme — Building Opportunities with Business (BOB) — that was showcased as one of VANOC's prominent demonstrations of social inclusion. Our evidence suggests that Games planning processes have become even more powerful instruments for the promotion of liberal philosophies through neoliberal local governance regimes; social inclusion is promised through the proliferation of ever more institutionally diffused public–private partnerships. With the neoliberal shift from public service provision to private sector entrepreneurialism, individual employability becomes the primary goal of, and normative justification for, social inclusion policies. Heavily circumscribed VANOC efforts at specific types of social inclusion have met with limited success, but it appears clear that the fusion of transnationally mobile mega‐events and prevailing doctrines of neoliberal entrepreneurialism has become a significant new framework for local urban social policy.RésuméLa candidature de Vancouver pour les Jeux olympiques et paralympiques d'hiver de 2010 a été acceptée alors que le Comité international olympique (CIO) était en mutation. Depuis la première décennie de ce siècle, le CIO incite les villes d'accueil à se préoccuper d'un éventail beaucoup plus large d'impacts locaux liés aux 'Jeux planétaires' et à mener des initiatives d'aménagement afin d'optimiser l'inclusion sociale locale. Cet article présente une étude de cas des politiques publiques et des principes d'inclusion sociale appliqués par le Comité d'organisation de Vancouver (COVAN) pour préparer les Jeux de 2010. Des entretiens avec des informateurs clés, une analyse documentaire et l'observation de participants permettent d'étudier un programme communautaire particulier, BOB (Building Opportunities with Business), présenté comme l'une des expériences les plus probantes d'inclusion sociale du COVAN. Les données suggèrent que les processus de planification des jeux sont devenus des instruments encore plus efficaces de promotion des philosophies libérales à travers des régimes de gouvernance locale néo‐libéraux, les promesses d'inclusion sociale passant par une prolifération de partenariats privé‐public toujours plus diffuse sur le plan institutionnel. Compte tenu de l'évolution néolibérale (de la fourniture de services publics aux initiatives entrepreneuriales privées), l'employabilité individuelle devient l'objectif premier, et la justification normative, des politiques d'inclusion sociale. Les efforts du COVAN, strictement circonscrits à certains types d'inclusion sociale, n'ont connu qu'un succès limité. Toutefois, il paraît évident que la fusion de méga‐événements mobiles à l'échelon transnational et des doctrines actuelles de l'entrepreneurialisme néolibéral a généré un nouveau cadre important pour la politique sociale urbaine locale.
