Centre for Social Innovation
Developing solutions for complex and everyday challenges.
Defining Social Innovation at Humber
Humber's Centre for Social Innovation addresses systemic social barriers and opens-up social opportunities. We do this by working alongside equity-deserving populations and the community organizations that support them. With this community-centric lens, we look for impactful ways to harness the ingenuity of Humber’s people – students, faculty and staff – and the potential of our physical resources, including buildings and grounds.
We seek to produce sustainable, just, effective solutions that enhance resilience and adaptability of social purpose organizations and create more equitable systems for us all.
Whether you are a Humber student, faculty or staff, or a community member, organization or business, we invite you join us.
We provide interdisciplinary and experiential learning opportunities.
GARDENS
Working with a dedicated community of growers to help fight food insecurity in South Etobicoke through urban gardening and the community garden “pods”.
Community Cybersecurity Collective
Through the facilitation of foundational cyber security skill development workshops in the non-profit sector, expert faculty and students empower community based organizations to protect themselves against cyberattacks.
Partner Highlight
Humber College and Othram Partner to Create and Measure Social Impact of Unsolved Cases on Families and Community
A new collaboration between Humber College and Othram Inc. will measure social and criminal justice impact and develop tools to support law enforcement and the development of programs to educate future forensic professionals.
Humber is the only college in Ontario to offer a Forensic Identification program providing students with leading-edge forensic knowledge and skills for public and private policing and laboratories. The college also has strong connections to law enforcement across the country.
This partnership will enable applied research initiatives to drive validation and adoption of new DNA technology in forensics. It will also support the development of curriculum to develop the next generation of forensic professionals in diverse topics such as genomics, bioinformatics, and forensic genetic genealogy.
For this initiative, Humber’s newest Centre of Innovation, the Centre for Social Innovation, will provide leadership to identify and cultivate social impact opportunities generated by the partnership with Othram.
Read the ArticleSocial Innovation Funded Projects
Humber’s potential for social innovation focuses on multidisciplinary approaches to facilitate the removal of barriers, community capacity development through the co-creation of solutions that address current societal challenges on a local, national and global level. Projects in this area aim to address challenges and create social opportunities by collaborating with community members and partners to take collective action. Social innovation projects create opportunities for students from programs such as Addictions and Mental Health, Criminal Justice, Child and Youth Care, Social Services Worker, Developmental Service Worker and many others across all Humber Faculties. Some of Humber’s facilities that support this applied research are the Conflict Resolution Simulation Lab, the Crime Lab, and the Forensic Studio.
Explore how you can get involved by contacting Daniel.Bear@humber.ca, Director of Social Innovation.
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- Community Agency Partnerships: Best Practices for the Creation of Healthy Communities
- COVID-19 Response: A scalable hand sanitizing sensing solution: IoT enabled hand sanitizer and soap dispensers
- COVID-19 Response: Canadian Hospital Simulator For Management of COVID19 Cases and Contact Tracing
- Developing a Best Practice Model for Mental Health Crisis Care: A Community-Engaged Approach
- Digital Narratives: Indigenous Economic Development
- Engaging and Education Young-Adult Cannabis 2.0 Consumers
- Experiences of hope, self-compassion and authentic collaboration: Foundations for a consumer-informed compassion-based human services delivery framework in a Canadian context
- Measuring the Impact of 21st Century Experiential Learning on new Immigrants Workplace Performance
