Our mission is to spark the next generation of leaders, ideas, and solutions to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges. Global Spark educates and mobilizes thousands of university students in STEM, business, and social sciences in social entrepreneurship and global development.

Our goals are:

• To provide an immersive and interactive learning experience for multidisciplinary students at UofT and beyond to understand social entrepreneurship and global development 
• To help create the next generation of global thinkers to solve the world’s toughest problems

Our methodology:

Every year, we host several professional development events for students at UofT and beyond to participate in. Since its inception in 2017 as Global Engineering Week, Global Spark has impacted over 5,000 students at U of T alone. Activities include:

• A keynote speaker series from industry and academia (past speakers have included Professors Amos Winter and Dan Frey from MIT)
• A social impact hackathon: Through this event, participants will be challenged to understand the key stakeholders involved, the economic and long-term feasibility of proposed solutions, and the unintended consequences of actions. This multidisciplinary social hackathon bridges the gap between international development, business and engineering.
• A social impact consulting program: where students work with real-life non-profit organisations to solve a problem for them, with the support and mentorship of young professionals experienced in non-profit work and consulting. Through this, students gain hands-on experience interacting with community organizations, developing and pitching pragmatic real-world solutions, and receive direct mentorship. 
• Curriculum integration: We have partnered with the UofT Engineering Faculty since 2017 to introduce real-life global development case studies, speakers, examples, and readings into the engineering curriculum and beyond, impacting 2,500 students in the classroom alone.