A social innovation fellowship with SI Canada opens opportunities for diverse talent from across Canada to learn and apply social innovation approaches and support communities and collaboratives to lean into action and take their next steps.
SI Canada has offered SI Fellowship for post-secondary students, emerging leaders, and seasoned practitioners.
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Post-secondary SI Fellowships
Elevating Student Engagement in Social Innovation Across Canada Fellowship Program (SI Fellowship), ran for the first time in 2022, aiming to help youth and young adults to meaningfully enter the workforce.
As part of the Mitacs Business Strategy Internship program, the eight month SI Fellowship worked with seven post-secondary institutions who paired a student with a social purpose organization (SPO) directly related to their career aspirations in the impact sector. Alongside work experience, students were connected to a national cohort of peers, mentors, and community leaders to build their professional network and participate in supplemental skill building workshops focused on transferable skills required to thrive in today’s world.
Specifically, students gained skills in:
- Inclusive design principles and practices
- Community-engaged, participatory approaches to research
- Developmental evaluation frameworks to track and measure social impact
- Building professional connections and growing their network
- Peer learning and mentorship
- Team collaboration, problem solving, and conflict resolution
In hosting this Fellowship, Social Innovation Canada (SI Canada) also aimed to provide SPOs and initiatives with increased capacity and project support from their student interns, especially as they respond to new and evolving challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Emerging Leader Fellowships
Social Innovation 4 Inclusive Economies Fellowship was offered in partnership with CSI, Ontario Trillium Foundation and three Ontario mid-sized cities to provide four emerging leaders with opportunities to learn about social innovation and community wealth building. Fellows were situated in Kingston, London, and Windsor and worked with a community based organization to advance a project in their region in relation to community wealth building. Projects included a social procurement strategy with a private sector company and the City of London; a Work-Place Inclusion Charter in Kingston; and Community Benefits in Windsor.
Senior SI Fellowships
SI Canada has a Senior SI Fellow, Maryam Mohiuddin Ahmed who is a Ph.d candidate in Social Innovation at the University of Waterloo. Maryam brought her professional experience to work specifically on the Financialization of Housing Lab and other related projects including the post-secondary SI Fellowship.