Established in 1999, Mitacs is a not-for-profit (NFP) organization that fosters growth and innovation in Canada by solving challenges with research solutions from the best academic institutions at home and around the world. For more than 20 years, Mitacs has worked with over 100 universities and academic institutions, thousands of companies, not-for-profits, and federal, provincial, and territorial governments to build partnerships that support industrial and social innovation in Canada. One of these partnerships is with Scotiabank.
In January 2021, Scotiabank launched ScotiaRISE, a 10-year, $500 million initiative to promote economic resilience among disadvantaged groups. Through ScotiaRISE, Scotiabank will support programs and partner with organizations across its footprint that provide the tools people need to improve their education and employment prospects, adapt to changing circumstances, and increase the likelihood of financial success.
In its first year, ScotiaRISE provided almost $26 million in community investments across +200 organizations within Scotiabank’s geographic scope, enabling support for people who needed it at more than 358,000 critical moments in time.
To help foster economic resilience, ScotiaRISE will invest in three important focus areas across the geographies where Scotiabank operates:
- Education: Increase high school graduation rates and post-secondary enrollment, in order to increase employment prospects, life opportunities, and full participation in the economy.
- Inclusion: Help newcomers to feel at home faster and secure meaningful employment, in order to support their contribution to the prosperity and social fabric of their communities.
- Employment: Remove barriers to career advancement for underrepresented groups, to help enable their financial success.
To further the understanding of economic resilience, Scotiabank and Mitacs have created the Scotiabank Economic Resilience Research Fund (SERRF). This three-year partnership will focus on research needed to advance economic resilience in communities across Canada.
This partnership will provide funding for collaborative research projects between Canadian not-for-profit organizations and researchers at Canadian academic institutions. Projects will be selected for support via a competitive process led by Scotiabank and funding will be deployed via the Mitacs Accelerate program as student internships.
The objectives of SERRF are to:
- Reduce financial barriers for Canadian not-for-profit organizations (NFPs) and charitable organizations to access talent from academic institutions in order to provide insights related to the economic resilience of Canadian communities
- Support the next generation of problem solvers to ensure that students are actively engaged in innovative, useful, and relevant community research
- Strengthen relationships between Canadian NFPs and academia through collaboration and knowledge sharing
- Increase the number of researchers representing the Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) community
- Continue to inform Scotiabank’s social impact strategy to ensure that it invests for impact
SERRF Research Themes
Through this initiative, the partnership will solicit research applications that support the three key themes below:
1. Accelerate newcomer integration
Demonstrate successful and rapid newcomer integration, enabling financial self-reliance and contribution to society. Canada’s prosperity and economic resilience are closely tied to the number and success of its immigrants, and as such, should be the primary focus of the research study and not as that of a support mechanism or benefit.
Proposed research projects will explore the experiences of newcomers to Canada (in the past three years) including immigrants, refugees, and temporary foreign workers to help fast track meaningful employment for newcomers to the country. Integration essentials might include language, culture and life skills, training and help qualifying for and finding employment, and support networks.
2. Increase high school graduation and post-secondary participation
Secondary and post-secondary education increases employment prospects, life opportunities and the likelihood of financial success.
Proposed research projects will target disadvantaged populations, including Canadian Indigenous communities and at-risk youth to ultimately facilitate a higher rate of high school graduation and post-secondary participation. Post-secondary education is defined broadly, to include university, college, and trades programs.
3. Remove barriers to career advancement for disadvantaged groups
Help disadvantaged people and groups overcome obstacles rooted in sexism, racism or homophobia and other forms of bias and discrimination to gain an employment foothold and to progress in their careers.
Proposed research projects should be focused on one or more equity seeking groups that face obstacles of sexism, racism, or homophobia (e.g., people with disability, Indigenous, veterans, LGBTQ, women, and BIPOC). People with a disability and people that identify as Indigenous are areas of particular focus in our portfolio in 2023. The project should determine how to remove barriers to meaningful employment and find solutions to career entry and advancement.