Deadline: 25-Aug-2025
Do you have an idea to improve your community? The Ontario Community Changemakers is a multi-generational Leadership and Micro-Grant Program for people with bold ideas to activate public space, enhance civic engagement, and foster social inclusion in their communities.
Themes: Public Space: Public spaces are areas or places that are welcoming and accessible to all. They play a key role in impacting health equity and community wellbeing. Sidewalks, streets, libraries, parks, gardens, community centres and places for ceremony are all potential locations for project ideas that create renewed energy, celebrate cultural heritage, and add vibrancy to local communities. Enhance Civic Engagement: Bringing people and communities together is a fundamental aspect of civic engagement. Projects which address common challenges and are rooted in local contexts, cultural approaches, and traditional knowledge can help spur people to take collective action and increase community participation in civic processes. Foster Social Inclusion: Change starts when they recognize visible and invisible barriers to participating in public space and public life. Creating the conditions where everyone, regardless of their lived experience and identity, is able to show up for themselves and one another can help to foster social inclusion. When they consciously design with and for marginalized communities, everyone benefits.
The Ontario Community Changemakers program supports leaders from diverse ages, backgrounds and lived experiences to deliver their own creative projects that will activate public space, enhance civic engagement, and/or foster social inclusion. Applications for the 2025–2026 program are now open. The deadline is August 25, 2025.
Selected Changemakers will receive $5,000 CAD in seed funding to implement one community project over the course of one year. Projects must respond to community needs, build on local assets, and be implemented through collaboration, and must take place in the Province of Ontario or in a First Nations Territory within the provincial boundary of Ontario.
The Studio component includes one two-hour online session and two full-day in-person sessions in October 2025 in Toronto, followed by regular monthly sessions until September 2026. Travel, meals, and accommodation during the Studio will be provided. Participants will become part of the Ontario Changemakers Network, receiving ongoing guidance from experts in planning, design, marketing, and more, and gaining access to professional growth opportunities.
Applications are open to individuals aged 19 years or older residing in Ontario or Ontario’s First Nations Territories who have a creative solution related to public space, civic engagement, and/or social inclusion. Individuals from Indigenous, Black, racialized and 2SLGBTQI+ communities, as well as emerging Indigenous leaders centering traditional and evolving approaches to placemaking including art, dance, ceremony, and commemoration, are strongly encouraged to apply.
The program runs for one year, from October 2025 to September 2026, during which Changemakers will implement their projects with support, virtual coaching, and peer networking along the way.
For more information, visit Ontario Community Changemakers.
