About the award

What is it?

The Mission from MaRS Climate Venture Diversity Award will be presented to an early-stage venture that has the potential to greatly reduce GHG emissions and is led by someone from one of four designated groups: A racialized group, people living with disabilities, Indigenous peoples and individuals who identify as women and/or non-binary. The winner will also receive a cash prize of $75,000 to support its growth.

The winner will be announced during a cocktail reception following the Climate Impact conference on December 1 at MaRS Discovery District.

The Challenge

Canadian cleantech entrepreneurs are leaders on the world stage, yet, data shows that ownership of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in cleantech is significantly less diverse compared to SMEs in other technology industries.

When looking at ownership of cleantech SMEs in Canada:

81%
are majority owned by men
64%
other sectors
0.9%
are majority owned by Indigenous Peoples
1.4%
other sectors
3.6%
are majority owned by members of racialized groups
12.2%
other sectors
0%
are majority owned by people with disabilities
0.5%
other sectors

Criteria

Program Eligibility

The award winner will be selected based on the following:

  • The potential of the venture’s solutions to reduce GHG emissions.
  • The value proposition of its solution.
  • Its diversity, equity and inclusiveness (DEI) strategy.

In order to be eligible, the applicant of the venture must:

  • Be a corporate leader in the Company.
  • The company must be a registered Canadian business engaged in climate technology. For the purposes of this Award, “climate technology” refers to physical or digital technologies that are explicitly focused on reducing GHG emissions and/or addressing the impacts of global warming.
  • Regularly engage in technological innovation at the company.
  • Submit a full application in a manner consistent with the Official Rules.
  • Be from one or more of the following four designated groups:

1. Member of a racialized group:

  • Refers to persons, other than Indigenous peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour. Examples of racialized groups include, but are not limited to: South Asian, Chinese, Black, Filipino, Arab, Latin American, Southeast Asian, West Asian, Korean, and Japanese.

2. People with disabilities:

  • Refers to people who are living with a long-term or recurring physical, mental, sensory, psychiatric, or learning challenge and who:
    • Consider themselves to be disadvantaged in employment by reason of their condition, or;
    • Believe that an employer or potential employer is likely to consider them to be disadvantaged in employment by reason of that condition, and;
  • Includes persons whose functional limitations owing to their condition have been accommodated in their current job or workplace.

3. Indigenous peoples:

  • Means persons who are First Nations, Métis, and/or Inuk (Inuit).

4. Individuals who identify as women, and/or non-binary:

  • Women include individuals who identify as women.
  • Non-binary refers to a person who does not identify exclusively as a man or a woman.

In addition to the applicant’s eligibility, the company should:

  • Own the intellectual property of any technology relevant to the application.
  • Not be a subsidiary of a larger parent company that would otherwise not be eligible for the award.
  • Have the potential to significantly reduce GHG emissions.
  • Be proprietary and/or patentable.
  • Have the potential to be scaled globally for major impact.
  • Be a small and mid-sized enterprise (SME) as defined by Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) Canada, and;
  • Fall within TRL3 and TRL5 on the nine-point Technology Readiness Level spectrum – as defined below:
    • TRL 3: Active research and development is initiated.
    • TRL 4: Basic testing to validate the technology in a laboratory/controlled setting.
    • TRL 5: Component and/or validation in a simulated environment.

If you have any questions, contact the Mission from MaRS team at mfm@marsdd.com

Apply now

Partners

In partnership with

HSBC