Canada’s social purpose sector is vast, and there are countless Black leaders building organizations, leading teams, transforming systems from within (and from outside) institutions, and making the sector stronger, more resilient, and more effective. 

This Black History Month — and Black Futures Month — we spoke to five such leaders in the social purpose sector whose work you should know about and follow. 

Kikelomo Koya | Social finance manager, Grand Challenges Canada 

For Kikelomo Koya, “It’s all about improving equitable access to basic needs,” she says. As a social finance manager with the global health innovation team at Grand Challenges Canada, an organization that funds health and development solutions globally, Koya knows that “access to healthcare, education, food, a home, etc., helps enrich a person’s life and makes it easier to thrive.” She says, “I grew up in a country blessed with wealth, but about 80 percent live on less than $1 a day. A key reason is that there isn’t an equitable distribution of wealth or access to available services. Your connections, network, income, race, status, or age shouldn’t matter when it comes to accessing essential services, and to be a part of solving that problem is what drives me.”

Koya’s also focusing in 2022 on learning about the funding journeys of non-profits. “I am learning that a non-profit’s financial sustainability journey is tedious, particularly for smaller non-profits,” she says. “It is interesting to learn how much of a roadblock funders/donors are despite their good intentions. I think it’s time to rethink how we fund non-profits and I am enjoying unpacking what could be.”

She’s also on a mission to bring the S back to ESG (environmental, social, governance-focused work). “Everyone is talking about the environment and governance. Some organizations are serious; others are ‘ESG-washing,’” she says. “However, I haven’t seen as much focus on the ‘social’ aspect of ESG though, so I’d encourage us to keep the ‘human’ front and centre.”

Onome Ako | CEO, Action Against Hunger Canada

The past six months have seen a staggering 300 percent increase in the number of people worldwide who are at extreme risk of famine — that’s 45 million people. This is one of the major problems Onome Ako is working to solve, as CEO of Action Against Hunger Canada, a global humanitarian organization fighting hunger and malnutrition. 

This work is not easy, of course, but especially considering what Ako says is a structural underfunding of humanitarian work. “In August 2021, Canada announced $155 million to support countries on the brink of famine,” Ako says. “This was welcome, but Canada, together with other countries, needs to commit to additional long-term, flexible and holistic funding to turn the tide on the hunger crisis and avert catastrophe. The funding must be flexible, unearmarked and frontloaded.” In light of this, Ako is looking forward to working with the Action Against Hunger team on a new strategic plan this year. “2022 is significant for me and my organization — in coming together as a team — looking back at our successes and challenges, and forging a way forward in this really complex context to build a solid forward-looking vision.” 

Through all this work, Ako says she remembers her parents’ legacy of community care. While growing up in south-west Nigeria, Ako’s father, a geologist, built a tap outside of her home so her family could serve the community fresh drinking water. Her mother bought extra food from market sellers — school-age girls — so those girls could go home and do their homework. “This is what really motivated me to be in the sector I’m in,” Ako says. “I knew I could be more engaged at an institutional level.” 

Shequita Thompson-Reid | Director of programs, Eva’s Initiative

“My mission is to live, work and build spaces where those most impacted by systemic violence and oppression can thrive,” says Shequita Thompson-Reid, who leads programs at Eva’s Initiative, a Toronto organization that provides shelter, transitional housing, and programming for young people experiencing homelessness. “As a Black immigrant to Canada as a child…my work and practice has been grounded in community development, activism and anti-racism before I even had language for it.”

And housing, specifically, is Thompson-Reid’s calling. “I have worked at the intersections of housing, community development, and shelter services. I constantly see the need for more affordable housing, especially for youth who have been impacted by systems such as the school, child welfare and the justice system. I have seen the impact of precarious housing for youth with limited access to resources and social capital. All of these health impacts are amplified for Black youth,” she says, calling on the social impact sector to fund more youth housing solutions.

Over 2022, Thompson-Reid plans to work “with diverse communities to support healing and justice through co-creating accountable practices that will hopefully build structures with historically disenfranchised communities impacted by interlocking systems of oppression,” she says. “In this work I hope that it will bring Black, Indigenous and racialized communities from the margins and into the centre of the systems built.”

Christopher Duff | Executive director, Canadian Council for Youth Prosperity 

Christopher Duff, who leads the Canadian Council for Youth Prosperity, works with — not for — youth this year. It’s a shift he and his organization have made: from seeing young people as clients to seeing them as co-creators of programs and services. “We’re no longer just asking the question, ‘How many youth participated or provided feedback on a particular offering within the sector?’” he says, “but it now becomes, ‘How many youth were involved in the creation of this offering?’”

Duff’s approach to this work mirrors what he says is his overall mission: “to help young people both recognize and lean into their brilliance, while having the world around them acknowledge, value and leverage this as well,” he says. 

“No matter your race, culture or the country you’re from, in youth there is a certain energy, optimism, creativity, and even naivety that is often found in this stage of life. And the question I often find myself contemplating is, are we doing enough, as a society, to cultivate and leverage this brilliance? Because it is often these characteristics that are needed to create real, long lasting impact that reverberates for generations to come. Young people were at the forefront of the civil rights movement. In addition to this, some of the world’s most valuable tech companies were founded by young people. And so my hope is to one day create an institution with a distinct mission to cultivate the brilliance of our youth and harness it to transform our world for the better.”

Sylvia Parris | CEO, Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute

“I have to honour the path that has been carved by those who have gone before – ancestors and those generationally,” says Sylvia Parris. “I have to take the work of forging toward addressing systemic issues for generations who will come after me.” 

Parris is the CEO of the Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute, an organization that researches models of education that meet the needs of African Nova Scotian (and African Canadian, more broadly) students, and does policy analysis, community engagement, professional and youth development, and more all on the same topic. 

When asked what she’s most excited to work on in 2022, Parris says: “Working with my community to centre their voices in our Africentric research! Our Afrocentric books, stories and social media education forums!” Her approach to this and all work is empathy-driven, which she says can be lacking in the social impact world. “There is not ample valuing of relationships and remembering that ‘social impact’ is meant to be grounded in caring and vulnerability.” 

On her entry on the Learning Institute’s team page, Parris quotes Maya Angelou: “I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.”

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