Strategy and vision

Our vision

At Engineers Without Borders Canada, we strive to unlock human potential.

We unlock human potential in Sub-Saharan Africa by investing in forward-thinking social enterprises. We support local innovators to accelerate their impact and apply their innovations on a global scale, to the benefit of millions.

We unlock human potential in Canada by fostering a community of leaders—supporting a network of established thought leaders while developing the next generation of pioneers.

We unlock human potential globally—collaborating with innovators across boundaries, consolidating our similarities, and learning from our differences. This enables people to contribute individually and as a collective, and to challenge the national and global policies, systems and institutions that contribute to the flawed status quo.

Woman with grains

Our vision is to identify and eliminate the root causes of poverty and inequity.

Our fellow human beings continue to live in poverty with diminished choices: struggling to access food, water, sanitation and basic health services.

10%

Annual increases in aid we're challenging the government to commit to.

In a world where there are enough resources for everyone to thrive, this is simply unacceptable. It is an affront to our beliefs. It is an affront to what is right.

Our vision is a world where everyone’s basic needs are met and where everyone can live to their full potential. Our mission is to catalyze changes that address the root causes of poverty and inequity by investing in people and ideas that will contribute to building an equitable and sustainable world.


We develop leaders.

We train Systems Change Leaders and partner Fellows with inventive social enterprises to foster untried methods of delivering services and new ways of operating. Together, we develop robust frameworks for businesses to innovate.

We collaborate with first-of-kind innovators in Sub-Saharan Africa to eliminate the region’s entrenched challenges. While the initiatives are local, they have the potential to incite global change.

60%

Social entrepreneurs who need access to talent

The learnings from every venture are scalable and continuously refined and applied throughout the world, to the ongoing benefit of countless communities.

Although we focus on Africa, the change we seek is not constrained. We work for universal change—meaningful, positive transformation at a personal level, and for communities, companies and the planet.

We invest in one another to bring about change at every level. For the university student discovering the depth of his or her individual potential in our Junior Fellowship; for revolutionary small and growing businesses in our Ventures; for millions of people in Africa, Canada and all over the globe.


To enact our vision, we are working towards:

30 social impact ventures. 5 scaled internationally.

We invest to accelerate potential solutions for development challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa. We then collaborate to scale the innovations from local to global capacities, to the benefit of millions.

100 Fellows embedded on-the-ground in ventures.

Volunteer placements provide much needed talent and experience for seed-stage businesses. The initiative is reciprocal; as catalysts for change, Fellows access unrivalled experiences to fuel rapid personal and professional development, and bring their expertise to Canadian development. Many remain in long-term staff and senior management positions within their ventures.

A powerful community of 30,000 innovators around the globe.

By partnering EWB Fellows with ventures in Africa and continuing to cultivate Systems Change Leaders in Canada, we are growing a global movement of leaders to overhaul struggling systems and create tangible social change.

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