The 2023 LSJC cohort includes leaders from across sectors in the GTA who are working on social justice issues including food insecurity, Queer rights, homelessness, disability, and more.
Learn more about each project and meet the teams below.
Reducing barriers to meaningful economic security and well-being for formerly incarcerated and / or criminalized women.
Team members: Snjezana Pruginic, Sarah Garcia, Tiina Eldridge
Create a safe and inclusive city for Arab-speaking women, visibly Muslim women, and other racial women of color who face gender-based violence in public spaces in the Greater Toronto Area. We plan to use the Leading Social Justice Collective Fellowship to develop innovative solutions and create a prototype action plan and ecosystem map of stakeholders to guide our efforts.
Team members: Noheir Elgendy, Kawther Ramadan, Eman Abdelsabour
This project aims to address issues of food accessibility and affordability in urban areas through the implementation of innovative strategies and technologies, with the goal of creating a more equitable and sustainable food system. By leveraging community partnerships and leveraging emerging technologies, we hope to increase access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food for all.
Team members: Shimona Patel, Kitty Raman Costa, Gemma Donn
Antisemitism is the most reported hate crime in Toronto (Toronto Police). We are designing an apolitical movement to dismantle antisemitism in Toronto applying inclusive, socially innovative and collaborative arts-based initiatives.
Team members: Gilad Cohen, Hieram Weintraub, Erin Schachter
Our team will address Gender-Based Violence (GBV) among new immigrants in the GTA through informative workshops, support connections and providing resources. Through a trauma-informed and intersectional lens, we aim to spread awareness, developing support systems and create a sense of community.
Team members: Savina Nankoo, Jeongwook (Jason) Son, Sungiel Shi
Creating Transformative Futures is a project that will come to be as an interactive, multi-sensory, art installation to celebrates the stories of intersectional identities, particularly community members who have faced marginalization due to race, disability, and sexual orientation. This project will offer a physical space for community engagement where narratives of queerness, racialization, and disability rights are told, reflected upon, celebrated and co-created with community.
Team members: Alycia Doering, Lauren Foote, Suzanne Faiza
The SDP is developing a novel form (infrastructure) where residents, grassroots organizations, nonprofits, businesses, TCHC and city government come together to shape the social development of a revitalizing neighbourhood. Elements of a model are emerging whereby these entities form a sustainable mutual partnership and network, creating new ways for neighbourhood voices to speak into local and municipal processes. We want to reflect on and clarify the core elements of the model that may be applied elsewhere.
Team members: Ismail Afrah, Daniella Castello
Building on a previous fellowship project, we are working to draft a housing charter and advocacy tool kit that can be used to inspire change in existing policies. The goal of this project is to implement change to minimize and/or end the cycle of homelessness and give everyone the standard of living that they are entitled to by providing access to housing.
Team members: Emma Murgida, Megan Way, Jarrod Armer
App-based gig work is isolated, precarious, and low-pay, with unpredictable daily conditions. This project will explore the mental health impacts of gig work and conduct a public education campaign.
Team members: Sahar Jafrani, Ariana Giulianelli, Madeleine Ross
Enhancing public knowledge and compassion for migrants freeing climate injustice while incorporating climate related migration education into services delivered by the settlement sector and from decolonizing practice to compliment the foundational work we have started in indigenous perspectives.
Team members: Mbalu Lumor, Nadia Umadat, Adriana Lilic
Transit access and connectedness within Scarborough, and throughout the GTA, consistently excludes some of the most public transit-reliant communities. Our project aims to bring together various ridership-based service providers to create a more holistic and accessible public transit system.
Team members: Lubaba Gemma, Megan Davies, Kishan Baskaran
The challenge we will work on is developing a unique, complimentary economy co-production model that is community-based and can act as a stimulus for addressing food security challenges during and in the post-pandemic world for communities in North Etobicoke.
Team members: Aiman Malhi, Amra Munawar, Saheed Quadri
CivicSchool is working to bring free, accessible, and inclusive civics and issue-based advocacy education for young people across jurisdictions. Our next phase focuses on forming a coalition of civics and youth leadership organizations across the Greater Toronto Area to pool resources and share responsibility for creating the resources and spaces all of us needed when we were learning how to advocate for local change.
Team members: Dasha Gueletina, Gurneet Dhami, Rebecca Pacheco
Developing a 2SLGBTQIA+ youth-focused resource to support intersectional, sex-positive, body-liberatory, harm-reductive and consent-based practice in navigating risk within relationships in a context of multiple, ongoing public health crises.
Deaf AI is a social venture formed on the idea of making society more inclusive, and the digital world more accessible to Deaf people. Deaf AI is an example of AI4 Social Good to specify how AI serves human beings, especially people with hard of hearing and hearing loss.
Team members: Mehdi Masoumi, Azadeh Bojmehrani
We would like to develop a free transportation support system for seniors and persons with disabilities who need assistance accessing health care. Here, volunteers would be paired with our clients to assist them with getting to appointments.
Team members: Sagar Nyaupane, Veronica Agudelo, Jessica Mahadeo
Engaging community organizations, sector leaders, experts and grassroot organizations across the GTA in meaningful dialogue to determine strategies to collaborate on systems-level interventions to addressing food insecurity.
Team members: Sanga Achakzai, Sana Hafeez, Morgan Sage
The pandemic has exposed the systemic inequities and barriers in accessing health care and services faced by the highly diverse populations who reside in Toronto’s inner suburbs. The Health Access Program aims to identify service gaps and reduce systemic barriers to health access while enhancing network building, cross-sectoral collaboration, and systems coordination.
Team members: Farhiya Mohamed, Lise-Ann Hellmich, Bukola Akingbade