Building Organizational Capacity

DI creates instruments that allow organizations to advance inclusion and diversity across all levels of the value chain. For instance, DI's Diversity Assessment Tool (DAT) offers comprehensive analysis of an organization that goes beyond representation by examining strategies and leadership performance metrics, culture operations, R&D and operations marketing outreach, and much other. The DAT is the basis for DI's discussions with other major institutions across all sectors, and includes more recently, analysis of diversity in Ontario's Innovation Ecosystem and of the Canadian sports ecosystem, in collaboration in conjunction with Canadian Women and Sport. Through bringing diversity and inclusion with organizational objectives and plans, DI has helped lead important changes across all sectors.

Reimagining the role played by the University in bringing about social change is an essential task.

The most significant takeaway from this project, and thanks to the massive support of other organizations and universities, is the capacity of the university to use its staff, its infrastructure and influence to engage in a responsive action for humanitarian needs and to create social value.

Since systemic inequality is present at every level of society, macromeso-, micro-, and personal--the solutions must be at be at all levels. The support of organizational and structural changes is therefore an essential element of bringing about system change however, it is equally important to support individuals' capacity and autonomy. In this context, research by DI has challenged the notion of how to address the "skills gap," which frequently leads to a tendency to focus on reskilling or upgrading applicants for jobs. DI's research, however uncovers the barriers and prejudices that cause companies to overlook talented people including internationally educated computer scientists, engineers and doctors with the highest rates of unemployment and under-employment.

Similar to the previous program similar vein, similar programs like the Newcomer Entrepreneurship Hub (NEH) and the Women's Entrepreneurship Hub (WE-Hub) tackle the challenges of employment faced by women and immigrants through providing opportunities for learning along with mentorship and resources to assist them in starting and expand their businesses and build transferable skills that can be used to find Run by diverse entrepreneurs and experts, in a safe setting, the programs provide the opportunity to access free language classes transport, childcare, and other services that wrap around to overcome the common barriers to accessibility for those in vulnerable groups. Continuous surveys provide feedback from the participants in order to enhance the program. They additionally, they provide information to providers of how to create programs to help their clients. The results have resulted in an idea that is being replicated and improved across the country.