2020 Dean's Student Award for Social Innovation
The Ted Rogers School of Management (TRSM) students have a long history of using business education and entrepreneurship to make real social change in our community and around the world. It’s time to recognize you, and celebrate and honour your contribution, and provide funding to advance your community-building initiative(s).
The Dean's Student Award for Social Innovation—funded by alumni and other external supporters of the Ted Rogers School of Management —is created to collectively recognize Ted Rogers School students’ contributions for community-building. The award, in the amount of $2,000 CAD, is presented annually to Ted Rogers School student(s) who have spearheaded a project, large or small, that has made a significant impact on the targeted community interest, has addressed a social interest or need, and brought some recognition to a specific cause.
Top Three Finalists!
The winner receiving the highest number of votes for the 2020 Dean’s Award for Social Innovation is Future Farmers. We spoke to the three award finalists for 2020 and learned more about what inspired them to give back to their community, how this award would help their initiative make a greater impact and why social innovation is so important to our communities.
2020 Winner!
Future Farmers is an art based research documentary and exhibit that explores food culture/access/sovereignty within the African diaspora, through a comparative analysis of Black-focused food sovereignty movement in Toronto, Canada and parts of America. This research started off during the 2019 Map the Systems competition. We conducted research and released a report on the barriers and challenges Black farmers experience within the food system and how they are adopting food sovereignty to tackle those problems. Our goal is to create awareness around the challenges and barriers faced by Black Canadians in accessing, growing and distributing food. And also connect community members to resources that exist within the community.
We hope this exploratory study will provide a foundation for knowledge sharing and coalition among the Black African diaspora to help shape the future of Black Food Sovereignty in Toronto, and educate the members of the community on how they can contribute to the movement and inspire the creation of a community based food system that is just and equitable.
Funds Allocation
The funds will be used to cover the expenses of creating the documentary and exhibit.
Typical student jobs don’t meet their needs. This is due to inflexible hours, micromanaging and low pay. We set out to change the way that students find work, by connecting them with customers in their area. This allows for flexible work, with a high level of autonomy and good pay.
So far, we have helped 65+ students find a total of 400+ jobs. This upcoming summer alone, we aim to do a total of 5000+ jobs, putting tens of thousands of dollars into students’ pockets, and helping them pay off their expenses and student debt.
Funds Allocation
Using the funds from the award, we would fund the development of an automated web-based system that will help run our operations, allowing us to provide more jobs for students.
LGBTQ2S+ youth and young adults only see themselves in 6.4% of prime time television characters. Out of this small amount of representation, many are seen to be problematic, hyper-sexualized, and stereotypical. In response, we have created Queer Collective, a cyber safe space to share our REAL stories. Our mission is to provide accurate representation for every subgroup of the LGBTQ2S+ community. Queer Collective is committed to creating accurate and positive digital representation for every subgroup of the LGBTQ+ community, alongside providing community-building events. We accomplish this by bringing together local creatives to pool their skills and resources. This provides community members with the opportunity to stay in control of the narrative while sharing their talents and REAL stories. Through The Queer Collective, we will help give a voice to those who are underrepresented in the media and our educational institutions to help share our stories and in turn create the education, sense of community, and true representation that all of us are so desperately seeking.
Funds Allocation
Allocated funds will be used in the development of our video content and in our marketing. Approximately $1,500 will be used in the purchase of video equipment to better develop our interviews and creative concert videos. the remaining $500 will be used to create business cards, stickers and other forms of advertising such as posters and digital ads.