With a $10 million gift from the billionaire Saputo family in Montreal, Concordia is establishing the SHIFT Centre for Social Transformation. The SHIFT centre will provide students, academics and community groups with resources to solve some of society’s big problems, such as inequity, injustice, and unsustainability. The objective is to foster social entrepreneurship and grassroots social innovation, connecting students with local projects. 

A project that has a transformative social impact is one that brings about change at the level of a whole system – impacting social norms and beliefs, resource consumption patterns, rules and practices, technologies and infrastructures, and/or the distribution of power. (from SHIFT website. https://www.concordia.ca/about/shift.html)

The centre has completed a first round call for proposals and will announce results in March, of projects to be funded.