Projets novateurs réalisés

Sourcing Intern 2023 – ETCH Sustainable Procurement Database Expansion Roll-out

While ESG initiatives and corporate social responsibility have become major priorities in boardrooms around the country, many organizations are still in need of support to execute specific strategies to tackle these important projects. As leading experts and champions within the sustainable procurement space in Canada, ETCH is uniquely positioned to apply its knowledge to instruct organizations on how to accelerate their environmental progress and implement sustainability directly into their business models. ETCH’s team of experts has developed an open-source Sustainable Procurement Database (https://www.etchsourcing.com/sustainableprocurementdatabase) for organizations to draw inspiration from and undertake sustainable initiatives in simple, digestible steps. This project will involve further development of the sustainable procurement database through the addition of multiple SDGs and designing the diversity, equity, and inclusion component of our go-to-market strategy with new stakeholders and a communication plan for the sustainable procurement database.  This project is part of ETCH’s brand recognition plan as one of Canada’s leaders in enabling organizational transformation from traditional to sustainable procurement and spearheading the goals/missions of achieving Canada’s net zero targets by 2030.

Impact Investing, Acceleration, and Advisory – McGill University

Propel Impact will be working with Mitacs interns across two universities to support social innovation and impact investing organizations in Canada.

Senior Housing Complex (Independent Living) Business Plan – Grand Bay – Westfield

The Census Metropolitan Area of Saint John has and will continue to grow. This has led to an increase in property values and a housing shortage. The project is to meet Council’s first strategic goal of smart growth through increasing housing stock. Council’s second strategic goal is to increase organizational capacity and the successful student will increase the Town’s organizational capacity through the development of a business plan for seniors housing.
The goal of the project is to provide, through a business plan, information enabling Council and a third party to make an informed decision regarding the development and operation of a seniors housing complex.
The two links below outline the strategic goals for the town and the annual report shows the aging population demographic of the Town of Grant Bay – Westfield.
Strategic Goal Link – chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://grandbaywestfield.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Strategic-Plan-2023-2026-FINAL.pdf
Town Annual Report – chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://grandbaywestfield.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/2021-Annual-Report.pdf

GenGuard Software Platform Expansion and Maintenance

Modernizing plant breeding programs through integrated genomic and phenomic data management and analysis is an important organizational innovation for many public and private plant breeding organizations. This project will expand the GenGuard database and software platform for additional high priority data sources from Nutrien, including new areas of business operations. The proposed project also aims to increase the security and maintainability of the databases and software systems that comprise GenGuard, which is a business priority for Nutrien Ag Solutions.

Civonus Web Application Development

Civonus Inc. is developing an internet based, transparent, asynchronous policy-making process for governments, public institutions, and civil society organizations/consultants who advise governments on policy issues, to use to improve their policy-making process. It is curated to produce deeply engaging, consensual, sustainable, equitable, inclusive, strategic, evidence informed policy-making.

This project is to develop, in stages, MVP, beta and commercial versions of the web application that is required to facilitate the policy making process.

Strengthening the support for BIPOC entrepreneurs in Canada

In Canada, only 3.5% of venture capital funding went to companies with at least one female founder, and only 2.2% went to companies with at least one BIPOC founder in 2021. There is an increased need to support BIPOC founders with access to employment, education, funding, training and a network that provides them with the knowledge, skills, and agency they need to thrive in an ever-changing world. The project will entail developing and piloting an investment and financial management strategy for startups within the BIPOC ecosystem that Tribe Network supports.

Technology to enhance Farm Decision-Making

Livestock ranch operations balance complex production efficiencies with economics, resources and climate and could benefit from automation or implementation of new technology. However, the practical details of using technology on the ranch need to be further investigated to determine their true value. Often, on-farm scenarios with live animals introduce additional issues causing technology to function in a less than ideal manner. Tracking livestock on expansive pasture land with GPS tags enables herd inventory and location data capture during the critical summer breeding season; but only if the tags function in the environment as expected. Under this application, we intend to employ a business strategy intern capable of assessing the resource requirements (time, labour, cost etc.) necessary to implement a GPS cattle tracking technology system on the ranch to improve management decisions. Partners will benefit by having evidence informed strategies that address the specific challenges of remote northern ranches. The new knowledge discovered will aid in process determination and development that may enhance beef ranch productivity.

Megh Patel – Online Remodeling and Design Platform for Homeowners and Contractors

The intern’s capstone project will be to develop an Online Remodeling and Design Platform for Homeowners and Contractors. The goal is that these homeowners will gain the knowledge required to support their remodelling endeavors, and encourage local contractors to focus on building an online presence to market aspects of their business and services. This platform creation will require in-depth research and understanding of the Canadian construction ecosystem, and available resources; it will become an important case study to Cansbridge and other fellows who choose to start their own business each year. The platform and it’s construction community will aim to help homeowners pursue their ideas to start their own remodelling projects, think innovatively, and provide them the necessary resources to do so. The intern will facilitate this community of interested homeowners in their learning in the hope that they not only inspire their communities, but also work together toward building our economy and encourage more skilled trades. This relationship between Cansbridge and entrepreneurship across Canada will foster talented, driven fellows that will become the future of the fellowship and continue to innovate as past fellows have done.

Sara Assaf – Improving Canadian’s Digital Literacy through increasing Accessibility of Digital Marketing Education

Digital marketing is more prevalent than ever, however only 60% of all Canadian businesses stated that they utilize marketing strategies. Of that, a hearty 75% of Canadian companies reported they were more successful after investing in content marketing (Made in CA,2023). Which poses the question – what makes Canadian businesses stray away from investing in marketing, and how can we convince them of its value? My project is: The Digital Marketing Resource Hub (DMRH). I seek to research tried-and-true marketing strategies and combine them into a set of marketing deliverables – consisting of guides, tools, and industry-standard resources, that can be combined into one, user-friendly, widely accessible Hub, that can be viewed on a website.The DMRH will be tailored to those seeking to expand their digital marketing knowledge at large. Students with limited knowledge on the practice of digital marketing, entrepreneurs who are looking for ways to scale to new markets, millennial professionals who may be looking to switch career paths and branch into tech – all of these groups stand to benefit from the existence of an all-inclusive, easily accessible collection of resources, found on the DMRH.

Anoushka Sinha – Social Entrepreneurship Modules For Post Secondary Instructors

This project aims to aid instructors at the post secondary level and provide them access to simplified tools in form of modules to faciliate the learning geared towards social entrepreneurship for young youth entrepreneurs. These modules will cover a diverse range of topics so as to ensure that a multidisciplinary number of organisations and individuals such as institutions, instructors and students benefit from it.

Municipal Community Garden Strategy

St. Alberts municipal development plan, Flourish: Growing to 100K, identifies community gardens as important to Urban Agriculture and Local Food Production in advancing the goal of Community Well-being. Historically, St. Albert provides ad hoc support to community gardens. Public interest in community gardens has increased in the past 5 years. St. Albert requires a strategy that will allow it to make purposeful planned investments which will maximize support for community gardens either on civic lands or private property, while balancing a range of variables including municipal space limitations, competition for space, and financial prudence. Developing a community garden strategy will require: 1) public engagement with a variety of interested citizens, groups, and organizations to identify community values, interests and needs, 2) review of governing documents, 3) review of strategies and lessons learned from other municipalities, 4) development of strategy, and 5) identification of resource required to implement and support the strategy. This project will help to define the municipal role in supporting community gardening, and provide St. Albert with a foundation for future actions and resourcing, in relation to its role.

Nashwaak Watershed Restoration and Outreach

The Nashwaak Watershed Association Inc. (NWAI) was founded in 1995 as a non-profit organization dedicated to promote, conserve, and restore the Nashwaak ecosystem by using science-based methods, community collaboration, and advocacy for the watershed and its inhabitants. The organization’s vision is to see “people caring for a clean, healthy, and beautiful Nashwaak River watershed that supports and connects people and wildlife for years to come.”

The overarching objective of the project is to improve the natural infrastructure in the lower Nashwaak Watershed to enhance the capacity of the floodplain to contribute to improved freshwater quality (reduced sediment and contaminants, improved fish habitat, reduced bank widening due to erosion, etc.), and mitigate climate change impacts. Community education and outreach about the importance of watersheds will take place at public volunteer events, through school programming, and community workshops.

This project will build on our past restoration efforts, as we continue reforestation efforts on two municipal properties that are owned by the City of Fredericton and are largely composed of retired hayfields. Restoring these areas to natural floodplain forest will include the planting of 1500 live willow stakes and approximately 10,000 native tree seedlings, some as part of public planting events.