About us 

The Canadian Cultural Mosaic Foundation (CCMF) is an award-winning not-for-profit organization run by committed volunteer Millennials and Gen Z. We work to improve race relations in Canada by creating cultural understanding through education, technology and arts. Being on the forefront of advocacy our foundation often works with ethnic communities on programming. Our board of directors lead the direction of our organization and team members lead the work. Our board consists of BIPOC leaders, while team consists of people with various intersecting identities and racial backgrounds, all whom are volunteers.

History: We started out as a multicultural volunteer group in 2009 made up of post-secondary students in Calgary, and officially registered as a not-for-profit in 2015. 

Location: Our headquarters is situated on on Treaty 7 territory (Calgary), however our work is nation-wide.

Vision: Educate Canadians  |  Mitigate Racism  |  Promote Multiculturalism
Funding: We are 100% volunteer led, but do offer paid student internships from time to time through government programs or donations. We are not funded as an organization by anyone, but often partner up with other organizations to get a bit of funding for specific projects and events. Any donation we collect through our website are used on specific project promotions or paying artists or contractors (if necessary). Some of the services we provide as an organization are to connect experts on our teams, as well as communities, with the right organizations. These services (such as audits, facilitations, trainings, strategies, case studies, focus groups, reports, programming etc.) will have a fee associated to them that are paid directly to the service-provider as a consultant.
Awards and honours: We have received several national awards and honours during the past years such as:
  • Community Engagement Advocacy, Sarb Akal Association
  • Community Advocacy Award, M.O.S.A.I.C.
  • Excellence in the Community Award, PCCA Alberta
  • Diversity Award, Diversity Magazine
  • Leaders in Diversity Award, FACL Western

Our work

Advocacy and lobbying

We advocate for improved race relations, particularly with a focus in Alberta as that is where many of our members are located. Essentially, everything we do is to advocate for this mission. However, more specifically, we also do this through engagement opportunities with the government, institutes and policy makers, social media advocacy, campaigns, petitions and more.

Projects & Programs

Over the years we have completed over 100 projects across Canada in partnership with various ethnic communities, cultural organizations, non-profits, governments and more. Through community partnerships and funds, we also provide ongoing long-term programming facilitation (paid service to individuals involved). Some examples:

Research

We lead, co-lead and support research projects related to race relations, cultural and religious relations. Some internal examples:
  • Long Way To Go - Research study with 150 Alberta K-12 teachers and admin staff on multiculturalism and racism within classrooms
  • This Act Doesn't Represent Us: ​A five-year (2018 - 2022) study on Canadian race-based hate incidents collected through English media-reported incidents

Events

We host several events, workshops, festivals and more throughout a year depending on partnerships and funds. However our national and annual event, the Canadian Anti-Racism Film Festival, is one that is most awaited. This festival inspires Canadians to combat racism through art forms and educational workshops. This festival travels across Canada. Want the festival to come to your city next? Contact us to let us know and we can begin a partnership!

Services

We provide various (paid contractor member) services to governments, organizations, educational institutes, workplaces and more. Our focus when approaching this type of work is to reference the Racial Equity Culture framework. It is essential to ground our work in a deep understanding of the Race Equity Cycle that Equity in the Center. Some of our services include:
  • Intercultural or Cultural Competency or Anti-Racism training/facilitation
  • Multicultural communications and marketing plans and toolkits
  • Provide in-house free services such as Culture Commons, ​Language DeCoded app, anti-racism e-course etc.
  • Public race-based incidents inquiries - on a regular basis we get Canadians across the country connecting with us to ask how they can report their race-based hate incident in order to create a more equitable and just society. We also have internal team member who can provide mental health support (this is the biggest and ongoing service we provide)