A community toolkit for air pollution investigations
Date
2025
Authors
Mjekiqi, Erza
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Executive Summary
This reflection summarizes my summer internship with Research for the Front Lines (R4FL) through the UVic Sustainability Scholars Program. It focuses on project scoping, collaborative process, key learnings, challenges, and outcomes. The confidential technical details and step-by-step procedures I produced for R4FL are intentionally excluded; those live in a separate toolkit delivered to the organization. What follows documents how I worked and what I learned so my contributions are visible and accountable without disclosing sensitive content.
Acknowledgement of Place and Positionality
I completed this internship remotely from the unceded, ancestral lands of the Stó:lō peoples (Stó:lō Nation) - S’ólh Téméxw, otherwise colonially known as Chilliwack, British Columbia.
As a settler working with Research for the Front Lines, I am very appreciative to have had the opportunity to learn about R4FL’s community-led research practices. Early on I learned that R4FL works differently: front-line communities set the questions and make the decisions, and staff and volunteers support that direction. R4FL serves communities who are directly and disproportionately impacted by climate change and/or the systems and industries causing it.Hearing about R4FL’s work with Indigenous communities was grounding. This project is only one small piece of R4FL’s wider work, but I’m excited by its potential to be built on in good ways and potentially put to use by communities.
Introduction: Purpose and Boundaries of this Reflection
My project with R4FL aimed to make community-led air-quality investigations more accessible. The original posting called for a synthesis of air-sampling methods, equipment options, and laboratory pathways. This reflection describes how I translated that broad scope into a feasible, community-focused toolkit and what I learned along the way. As someone without a formal environmental or science background but eager to build my knowledge, I narrowed the scope, with guidance from my mentor, Marcia, to a pathway appropriate to my stage of learning while still addressing the spirit of the posting’s research questions. The posting explicitly encouraged Scholars to adapt scope to their expertise and interests, which made that choice possible. Because the toolkit contains confidential links and may be built on and integrated with other R4FL projects, the final deliverable is not being shared publicly; instead, this report provides a high-level overview of its aims, structure, and development process.
Description
2025 UVic Sustainability Scholars Program Final Report
Keywords
air pollution, toolkit, volatile organic compounds, air sampling, Sustainability Scholars Program