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The Maple Leaf Centre for Action on Food Security awards scholarships to honour the contributions of past Maple Leaf Foods Board of Directors Chairs David Emerson, Wallace McCain, and Purdy Crawford. Three scholarships are awarded each year for a three-year period to Master’s or PhD students who want to learn more about food poverty in Canada.

We welcome scholarship proposals that seek to fill knowledge gaps around food poverty in Canada, with a particular (but not exclusive) focus on the important topics listed below.

1. Risk factors and predictors
2. Who in Canada is most at risk of food insecurity? What has been their experience with food insecurity?
3. What factors mediate or moderate the relationship?
4. Potential therapies’ effects and efficacy
5. How and at what levels can we eliminate food insecurity in Canada?
6. What are the best programs, policies, and/or market tools to use?
7. Who needs to be a part of the process?

About the provider:

Maple Leaf Foods has made a long-term commitment to creating shared value, which includes significant social change. As part of this commitment, we completed a two-year consultation process to develop a community impact plan, culminating in the establishment of the Maple Leaf Centre for Action on Food Security (the Centre) in 2016, a registered charity with an independent Board of Directors. The Centre is dedicated to collaborating across sectors in order to reduce food insecurity in Canada by half by 2030. The Centre promotes important public policies and invests in knowledge development and food-based activities to help people and communities achieve long-term food security. The Centre was founded in 2016 and is led by a board of directors comprised of four independent professionals.

Since its inception, the Centre has invested in 22 projects across Canada that use innovative techniques to improve reliable access to decent food and reduce food poverty. The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in 2020, brought attention to the difficulties of food access in Canada and around the world, as well as the disproportionate impact on racialized and low-income populations. We fought for direct financial benefits for individuals in need, and we channeled increased money to emergency food operations, working with our partners. While emergency food relief has never solved or will ever address food insecurity, it has been a vital and necessary service during the pandemic.

In 2020, the Centre and Maple Leaf Foods gave over $2 million in support of emergency food access (in addition to the Centre’s ongoing commitments) and over $2.5 million in product, a 67 percent increase over 2019. We also sponsored a nationwide campaign to raise both awareness and funding for Community Food Centres Canada and Food Banks Canada.

The Centre awarded the first three Maple Leaf Board Chair Scholarships in Food Insecurity to Master’s and PhD students from the University of Toronto, University of Saskatchewan, and University of Calgary as part of our ongoing focus on increasing knowledge about barriers to food security and the efficacy of interventions to provide sustainable solutions.

To enhance food security, the Maple Leaf Centre for Action on Food Security (the Centre) engages with other organizations and individuals. Our mission is to eliminate food insecurity by 50% by 2030 through collaborating across civil society, the public and business sectors. We’re raising awareness about this serious societal issue, campaigning for critical policies, and funding programs that will help us achieve long-term change.

The Centre supports projects that improve people’s and communities’ ability to attain long-term food security and have the potential to be reproduced or scaled up to have a larger impact. To assess program impact and increase knowledge sharing, we support efforts that promote learning, networking, and measurement.

These scholarships honor the efforts of past Maple Leaf Foods Board of Directors Chairs David Emerson, Purdy Crawford, and Wallace McCain. Three scholarships are given out each year to master’s or doctorate students who are working on research that adds to the body of knowledge about food insecurity in Canada. Candidates are chosen based on their academic preparation, research findings contribute, and submission quality, which includes feasibility and methodological rigor.

These scholarships will fund high-quality, in-depth research that advances our understanding of food insecurity and the impact of policy and program initiatives.

Scholarship Sponsor(s): MAPLE LEAF CENTRE FOR ACTION ON FOOD SECURITY

Host Institution(s): Canadian Universities

Scholarship Worth: $15,000

Study Level: Masters (Postgraduate)

Nationality: All

Scholarship Offer:

$15,000 to cover any costs incurred as a result of your research.

Eligibility for Scholarship

1. A master’s or doctoral student at a Canadian university in any discipline.
2. Have a good academic standing with their college or university
3. Currently enrolled in their second or third year of post-graduate education and/or planning to begin their thesis research in the academic year 2022/2023.
4. Conducting thesis research to fill knowledge gaps in the area of food insecurity

Proposal requirements

1. A curriculum vitae CV
2. A letter of reference from a research supervisor (this letter can be sent by your supervisor directly to the Centre at [email protected], if preferred)
3. An overview of the following (this section should be no longer than 6 single-spaced pages, excluding references)
4. The research purpose, research question, target population, and objectives
5. A brief background and rationale
6. Proposed methodology
7. How the research fills knowledge gaps about food insecurity in Canada, and plans for sharing research findings
8. Other sources of funding for the research
9. An explanation of how the research aligns with the Centre’s goal

Candidates will be chosen based on their academic readiness, research alignment with the Centre’s goals, and submission quality, including feasibility, methodological rigor, and potential contribution of findings to the body of knowledge on Canadian food insecurity (such as determinants, risk factors, impacts, and interventions).

Application Procedure

Following the completion of the research, scholarship recipients will be asked to do the following:

1. When the job is finished, a final research report that shares the findings is produced.
2. A description of how the monies were used and how they helped the student to improve their work.

Students may be asked to give a presentation about their study to the Centre’s partners and/or the Board of Directors.

Note

Full proposals must be submitted by 11:59 PM [EST] on February 18th, 2021, using the fillable form at the bottom of our scholarships webpage. If you’re sending us a reference letter through email, please be sure to include the candidate’s full name in the subject line and send it to [email protected].

Admission deadline: 

The deadline for The Maple Leaf Centre for Action on Food Security 2022 is 18 February 2022

GoodLuck!