Our Services
We are a non-religious non-profit working for all sectors of Canadian society.
Our work is about civic religious literacy – a framework to guide individuals and organizations to better understand religious, spiritual, and non-religious individuals they work with, live with, engage with, support, and teach.
We work in schools, the work environment, and community to offer training, research, consulting, and program evaluation. In all these services, our approach is localized and customized for your specific needs.
Our Work
Our work across Canada includes projects with funders and clients. It involves partnerships with various local leaders and organizations. We do this to consider the unique qualities of each province and territory and cater our educational programming for the topical or industry need of each group we work with. All our work is grounded in our mission and vision.
Check out our current projects and engagements, or testimonials and a gallery of recordings and videos to learn more.
Our Team
Our team consists of award-winning academics and educators, supported by a board of directors and advisory team who are internationally recognized experts. We are passionate and committed academics and community leaders from various religious, non-religious, and Indigenous backgrounds.
As religious literacy specialists, researchers, and educators, we inform the Canadian society of spiritual diversity in its many forms – religious, spiritual, and non-religious. We do this to encourage civic attitudes and understanding across Canada.
Why civic religious literacy matters
Civic religious literacy is not just content-knowledge. It is a set of skills that can address the root problems of misunderstanding, lack of knowledge, or prejudice that leads to religious discrimination, religious bullying, and hate in Canada.
This is important as religion continues to be the second most common motivator of hate crimes from 2012 to 2021.
Specific statistical details vary by province and region, but hate crimes motivated by religion is of particular concern in Canada’s two largest cities of Toronto and Montreal.
The number of police-reported hate crimes based on religion has been very high, even though researchers and law enforcement know that the willingness to report hate crimes is low. So, we know this data is just the tip of the iceberg.
Additionally, our work responds to four practical needs across Canada today:
These four needs are discussed here and considered within the distinct provinces we work in.
Header Photo: Public Domain Picture by Kai Oberhäuser
Data source: Statistics Canada (2022), the Toronto Police Hate Crime Unit (2021), and the SVPM (2021).