Workplace Opportunities: Removing Barriers to Equity (WORBE) 2026 Call for Proposals (up to $500,000) – YOA

Deadline: February 13, 2026

Proposals are invited for the Workplace Opportunities: Removing Barriers to Equity (WORBE) 2026. The WORBE program is an Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) initiative that helps employers topic to the Employment Equity Act (the Act) in advancing fairness for the 4 designated teams by means of sector-particular methods and collaborative partnerships.

Now, with $2 million obtainable yearly, for up to three years, WORBE will make investments its concentrate on measurable progress. While earlier funding rounds emphasised consciousness and schooling, the 2026 Call for Proposals will spend money on revolutionary, scalable, and outcomes-pushed initiatives that transcend consciousness to full implementation.

To assist this work, WORBE will present entry to a 3rd-celebration evaluator to assist tasks set baseline measurements and apply constant analysis strategies all through the challenge lifecycle. Whether you’re a enterprise, non-revenue, tutorial establishment, or a coalition of changemakers, WORBE provides a platform to check revolutionary concepts, construct inclusive partnerships, and scale what works.

Objectives

The objective of the 2026 WORBE Call is to assist tasks that may clearly display how their design fulfills every of this system’s core targets:

• Identify and eradicate employment obstacles in opposition to individuals in a number of designated teams.
• Improved illustration of a number of of the designated teams inside workplaces, occupational teams or sectors with low illustration.
• Increased understanding amongst stakeholders of trade-particular obstacles to variety and inclusion and efficient human sources practices to deal with them.
• Development of recent inclusion instruments and guides tailor-made to trade-particular wants.

Funding

• The 2026 WORBE Call provides up to $500,000 per yr for three years utilizing a pay-for-performance funding mannequin. This strategy ties funding to the achievement of particular, attainable outcomes and outcomes, making certain that tasks stay centered on measurable impression and accountability.

Eligibility

Open to:

• Academic establishments.
• Employer associations (unionized or non-unionized) in Canada.
• Federally regulated non-public sector organizations.
• Not-for-profit organisations.
• Private sector organizations.
• Individuals* (integrated, or who’re keen to incorporate).

*Individuals or teams of people are inspired to apply, however to be eligible to obtain funding, they need to set up a Canadian authorized entity (akin to a company or a not-for-profit group) able to coming into into binding agreements in Canada.

Assessment Criteria

All functions shall be fastidiously reviewed by an impartial panel of sector-associated consultants (evaluate panel). They will assess your proposal primarily based on:

• How nicely your challenge aligns with WORBE’s targets (see beneath).
• Whether your challenge plan is lifelike.
• Whether the challenge is capability-prepared, with plans for staffing, infrastructure, and timelines, making certain the sources wanted for the challenge are totally outlined and
• Your potential to construct on the challenge’s success and measure outcomes.

Application

Click here to apply

For extra data, go to WORBE.