Foundation Initiatives
Canadians develop a better sense of identity and belonging by contributing to their community, by sharing their talents and by exploring their creativity as an expression of active citizenship.
Active citizens create healthy communities, physical or virtual places that integrate everyone, irrespective of background or physical or mental aptitudes, and encourage their full development and participation. Such communities can be more adaptable, more enterprising, more resilient in addressing change.
The Foundation is working with Canadians in building a society that is more inclusive, sustainable, resilient and sustainable. This is more important than ever now as Canada undergoes demographic changes with an aging and more diverse population, in a world being transformed by technology, profound economic shifts and global challenges in the areas of climate, health, security and others.
The Foundation has undertaken or launched initiatives in education, the arts, community development, sustainability and health.
These initiatives share some common characteristics: all are based on engaging people directly in learning and problem-solving, all have qualities of innovation in their approach and all seek not simply to solve problems, but to transform systems.
Towards Social Innovation Generation
The Foundation has also funded the projects of a number of social entrepreneurs, people with a vision for change in a particular domain, practitioners who have demonstrated successful outcomes and who are ready to increase the impact and durability of their ideas. From this ‘living lab’ of social innovation has developed our Social Innovation Generation (SiG) program in partnership with the PLAN Institute for Caring Citizenship, the MaRS Discovery District, and the University of Waterloo.