What would you do with $100,000?
THE iA EMPLOYEE FAVOURITE!
This year, we’re donating $500,000 to charities that work with people with disabilities and their communities.
Congratulations to the winners!
4 grand prize donations of $100,000
8 donations of $10,000
At iA, we support and celebrate diversity and encourage inclusion. Our differences make us unique, and even stronger.
Our contest is focused on supporting Canadian charities that work in the health, education, environment or social services fields and have a mission, or a component of their mission, dedicated to supporting people with disabilities and their communities.
Enter by submitting your project! 12 charities will be chosen and submitted for a public vote.
Selection CriteriaSelection criteria
To be eligible, you must meet the following criteria:
- Be registered with the Canada Revenue Agency
- Operate in the health, education, environment or social services sectors
- Aim to improve Canadians’ quality of life
- Demonstrate how your charity’s mission, or a component of its mission is dedicated to supporting people with disabilities and their communities.
- Provide assistance to individuals – we are not looking for organizations that help other organizations
- A submission that show integration could be considered an asset
- Demonstrate that the donation would be used for concrete initiatives starting in 2023 at the latest
The winners
Quebec
Winner of an additional $5,000 - $105,000 total
Maison Lémerveil Suzanne Vachon
Fulfilling your potential every dayA donation of $100,000 would help provide more specialized daytime respite and tailored activities for children with severe illnesses and youths with multiple and severe disabilities (children under 5 years of age with multiple and severe disabilities or serious illnesses and young people over 21 years of age with multiple disabilities).
These services provide them with support throughout their life to ensure that they develop their full potential, explore their environment to the fullest, and feel fulfilled every day. These services are also a great help to the families, enabling them to pursue their professional life and get some well-deserved rest.
We expect to greet between six and eight children per day for stimulating activities geared to their particular conditions, thereby allowing their parents to pursue their professional activities with peace of mind. For the youngest among these children, we aim to awaken their senses and self-awareness, provide unique learning opportunities in keeping with their level of development, and offer accessible modes of communication. As for young adults, the service enables them to maintain their functional skills and fulfil their potential every day.
Charity’s missionProvides youths living with multiple disabilities and children with severe illnesses with respite care and pediatric palliative care throughout their life. The right to self-fulfilment is advocated, despite the complexity and severity of the disability or illness.
Western Provinces
Winner of an additional $5,000 - $105,000 total
Food Stash Foundation
Rescued Food Box DeliveryA donation of $100,000 would go towards Rescued Food Box deliveries supporting food-insecure Vancouverites with disabilities and/or chronic illnesses that make it challenging to leave home. Food Stash rescues healthy surplus food – whole fruits and veggies, dairy and substitutes, meat and alternatives – that would otherwise go to waste. We carefully package customized weekly boxes, which are delivered by zero-emission e-bikes to more than 100 households per week. This program fights food waste, helps the environment, and provides dignified access to healthy and delicious food, at a time when high food costs and inflation are worsening food insecurity.
Rescued Food Box member households include about 40 children, and among members surveyed, about 57% are persons with disabilities, 40% have a chronic illness, 23% are seniors, and 10 to 13% are newcomers or refugees. Some members cannot leave home, and others face multiple barriers to accessing conventional emergency food services.
Charity’s missionFood Stash reduces food waste and food insecurity. We rescue over 80,000 pounds of surplus food per month (for example, imperfect produce and surplus dairy) from retailers, wholesalers, and farms. We deliver weekly customized boxes of healthy food to 110 food-insecure households with chronic illnesses and/or disabilities. We run a “pay-what-you-feel” Rescued Food Market open to all, serving more than 100 people a week. We deliver food to 35 charitable partners collectively serving more than 14,000 people a week.
Atlantic Canada and Northern Canada
Winner of an additional $5,000 - $105,000 total
Alzheimer Society of NB
Dementia Friends NBA donation of $100,000 would go towards creating dementia-friendly communities in New Brunswick. A dementia-friendly community is a place where people living with dementia, their families, and care partners feel included and supported. It’s a place where people are educated on dementia and can interact with people living with the disease in a helpful and understanding way. It also involves physical changes to a space to make them more accommodating to the needs of people living with dementia. Through small, but intentional changes, we can help reduce the stigma that people living with dementia experience every single day.
Our project will help people living with dementia and their circle of care by making their community more inclusive of their needs. We anticipate that the short-term results will be the hiring of a Dementia-Friendly Community Coordinator and the creation of provincial program materials.
Charity’s missionThe Alzheimer Society of New Brunswick exists to alleviate the personal and social consequences of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias through the provision of support, education, and advocacy and to promote the search for a cause and a cure.
Ontario
Winner of an additional $5,000 - $105,000 total
The Table Soup Kitchen Foundation
Accessibility @ The TableA donation of $100,000 would go towards helping us remove barriers to the hungry people who access our facility on a weekly basis. We own our building and need to ensure that people with walkers, wheelchairs and other challenges are able to access our space. We need automatic door openers, an accessible bathroom and a commercial chair lift for guests to reach the 2nd floor. Due to an increase in food costs and weekly visits, any money we had in our budget will have to be allocated to meet the direct food needs of our guests.
The people that we seek to help with this grant are those who come with visible or invisible disabilities. A lot of our guests are seniors who are struggling with rising costs and our building needs to be upgraded to meet their accessibility needs. We have many guests who have walkers or wheelchairs and struggle to access our building without the assistance of our staff.
Charity’s missionOur mission is to serve the hurting, hungry, and homeless people in our community who are dealing with food insecurity, illness, disabilities, addictions, and chronic unemployment. We offer a weekly Food Bank, Soup Kitchen, Exchange Clothing and Household items store, and a Men’s Shelter. We provide all of these for free through fundraising efforts that attract corporate and individual contributions.