February 2019: Inaugural Call for Projects

Inaugural Call for Projects

Employment and Social Development Canada’s original call for proposals to establish the Future Skills Centre encouraged proponents to identify an initial suite of ready-to-launch projects.

Youth working together to plant a tree.
Photo courtesy of Actua

The consortium partners identified 12 projects through targeted stakeholder engagement. Six projects were eventually selected following an adjudication process by the Centre’s interim project sub-committee.

Adjudication

On April 2, 2019, the Future Skills Centre announced $11.58M in funding over two years for six inaugural innovation projects:

The adjudication was based on an established set of evaluation criteria, including:

  • Addressing a clearly defined and well-specified need related to skills development;
  • Alignment with the Centre’s Goals to create opportunities for under-represented and vulnerable groups;
  • Demonstration that the projects use new and innovative approaches and ideas to answer questions that have not been previously answered about skills development challenges; and,
  • Generating useful and actionable evidence on what works in skills development.

Inaugural Innovation Projects

A young indigenous woman in a library.

Indigenous ICT Development Centre

Exploring approaches to build awareness and capacity in the information and communications technology sector for…
Two young men and a young woman sit outside of a cafe working on laptops.

Project Integrate

Testing an integrated assessment model and job matching for youth job seekers
Youth playing outdoors with a stick and ball.

For-Credit InSTEM Program

Testing a culturally-based approach to essential employability skills training for Indigenous and Northern youth.
A young and diverse group smiling with arms around each other.

FUSION: Future Skills Innovation Network for Universities

A national network of Canadian universities focused on innovative skills development to prepare students for…
Three professional women brainstorming in a meeting with their laptops.

FAST: Facilitating Access to Skilled Talent

Testing expanded occupation streams for an online skills assessment and development platform to help newcomers…
Young business people working at office on a new project.

ADaPT: Digital competencies

New skills training program to test a blended approach for digital and professional competencies.