The Village Lab facilitates the development of cross-jurisdictional collaborations and partnerships between key health system stakeholders, including Indigenous community members, service provider agencies in Manitoba, regional health authorities, and policymakers, to better integrate research data and knowledge into the development of health services and initiatives for marginalized and equity seeking communities in Manitoba. The Lab is committed to creating a meaningful and sustainable Manitoba-wide network of researchers, Elders, knowledge holders, peers, people living with HIV, people with lived and living experience, service providers, governments, advocates, and funders, working to address complex health and social system issues affecting marginalized and equity seeking communities in Manitoba. Through these partnerships and communities of practice, we create the infrastructure, which in this context refers to the supportive framework and resources necessary for effective community-based research. This infrastructure includes specialized resources such as access to research facilities, data collection tools, funding opportunities, and institutional support. Additionally, it involves expertise in research epistemologies and methodologies, ethical considerations, data analysis, and community engagement strategies. We also provide mentorship and training for students and learners, offering guidance in research design and implementation, and we share resources and expertise with the wider community, ensuring that knowledge and best practices are disseminated and applied beyond the colonial academic research setting.

The Village Lab is committed to strengthening research capacity among community partners, peers, mentees, trainees, and students, including the capacity of community agencies to conduct community-based research and develop/implement interventions. We are also committed to skills building and capacity strengthening among trainees, peers, and community members in the colonial academic research setting.

The Village Lab is dedicated to transforming research knowledge into action to make a significant impact on the health and wellbeing of marginalized and equity- seeking communities. Through community-based research and interventions that include decolonizing approaches, we generate and share knowledge across a range of topics and domains, such as HIV, sexually transmitted and blood borne infections (STBBIs), infectious diseases, harm reduction, community health and well-being, social inequities, and social determinants of health, as well as health and social care access. Our goal is to go beyond research to actively apply the knowledge we acquire in ways that inform policies, services, and organizational practices. Through these efforts, we also prioritize sharing the knowledge we generate via research with our communities in accessible ways.