CIRA welcomes 24 new partners to its Community Investment Program and building a better online Canada.
As many of you know, CIRA’s interests in the Canadian Internet extend beyond the .CA domain alone. We have a long legacy of giving back to our community and a key plank of CIRA’s efforts in this regard is our Community Investment Program. The program provides resources to non-profit organizations in Canada to help them create programs, services, or original research that responds to the needs of a rapidly changing digital landscape.
We’ve just announced the third round of funding through the program and I’m pleased to welcome another 24 partner organizations into the CIRA community.
This latest funding is coming at an important time. We’re seeing a national debate start on access to quality Internet. Canadians have serious concerns about the ability of low-income Canadians to access online services, and there is an emerging consensus that digital literacy needs to take an expanded role in our curriculum.
There are non-profit organizations and academic leaders across Canada working on these issues and we’re pleased that CIRA can support their work. Many of the organizations we have funded in the past, such as the Kitikmeot Heritage Society and the First Mile Connectivity Consortium, have told us that CIP funding was critical to the success of their project and I know from talking to project leaders that they are making a real difference in the communities they serve.
With this latest announcement, CIRA has invested over $3 million through the community investment program, funding 78 projects from coast, to coast, to coast.
While the criteria for the program have remained consistent, the projects this year are as diverse, creative, and innovative as ever. I can’t speak to all 24 projects here, but I do encourage you to check out the full list online. There are a few examples that I wanted to highlight.
The North Island College Centre for Applied Research Technology and Innovation is starting the NICBotCamp program, which will help youth build their science, technology, engineering and math skills by providing robotics camps throughout the North Island and giving students with access to online robotics equipment from home.
Promoting Education and Community Health (PEACH) is creating an innovation hub prototype program that will help bring low-cost access to digital and internet opportunities to the Jane Finch Community. This will offer an opportunity for low-income residents to access the internet and the digital world. The program will be run by youth who can also build transferable skills in repair and business development.
CompuCorps Mentoring is developing a 12-week program to increase digital literacy and expose the Aboriginal community to IT sector career options. 100 women from different Aboriginal communities in Ottawa and the surrounding area will directly benefit from the initiative when the course is completed.
Each year we are humbled by the work that our community investment partners are able to achieve and the creative ideas they have to serve their communities using digital technology. In our small way we’re helping to build new skills, improve Internet access, and help Canadians better navigate their digital world.
You can find the full announcement online here.
Byron Holland (MBA, ICD.D) is the president and CEO of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), the national not-for-profit best known for managing the .CA domain and developing new cybersecurity, DNS, and registry services.
Byron is an expert in internet governance and a seasoned entrepreneur. Under Byron’s leadership, CIRA has become one of the leading ccTLDs in the world, with over 3 million domains under management. Over the past decade, he has represented CIRA internationally and held numerous leadership positions within ICANN. He currently sits on the Board of Directors for TORIX, and is a member of the nominations committee for ARIN. He lives in Ottawa with his wife, two sons, and their Australian shepherd, Marley.
The views expressed in this blog are Byron’s opinions on internet-related issues, and are not necessarily those of the organization.
