Corporate Partners
Ensuring that Canadian youth have the education and skills required to become good citizens, and to succeed in a changing society and knowledge-based economy, is an issue that concerns us all. Increasingly, Canada's corporate sector has helped meet that challenge by providing scholarships and co-op placements for students, sponsoring academic awards and contests, providing professional development opportunities and internships for teachers, taking part in business/education partnerships, and enabling employees to serve as resource people for schools.
Industry Canada is pleased to be working with four corporate partners of the Prime Minister's Awards for Teaching Excellence. All of these corporations have demonstrated a strong commitment to education. Their support will enable this program to honour hundreds of outstanding Canadian teachers and to share their winning ideas and teaching methods throughout the country.
Bell Canada supports many education-related initiatives, including SchoolNet, Expo Science, the Chemistry and Physics Olympiad, the National History Awards, and the Youth Science Foundation. To assist teachers in the classroom, Bell recently distributed more than 8700 free copies of a CD-ROM about Alexander Graham Bell to schools in Ontario and Quebec, and supported the 1996 Canada Remembers education resource kit. Bell also invests more than $3 million per year to support research at universities in Ontario and Quebec.
GE Canada sponsors, and is involved with, several educational initiatives, including the E.C. Drury School for the Deaf and the Canada Scholarships Program. Several hundred GE Canada employees volunteer their time to projects, from working with disabled children to mentoring and participating in special education programs. Additional sponsorships are also awarded by GE Canada to many Canadian universities, colleges and teaching hospitals.
Over the years, Kraft Canada has supported many national programs to recognize teachers and foster better education, including the McLuhan Foundation for Teaching Excellence, the KidsWorld Teacher of the Year Award, Take Our Kids to Work and Junior Achievement. Kraft Canada is a major sponsor of Protect our Planet, a national publication tailored to grade school students and distributed to schools across the country. Kraft has also developed alliances to promote the link between nutrition and learning.
The Royal Bank Financial Group has made grants in excess of $44 million since 1979 covering a wide variety of educational organizations, including the Queen's University National Teaching Fellowship in Education and the Conference Board of Canada/Royal Bank National Partners in Education Awards. The Queen's Fellowship has included a special program to bring Prime Minister's Award recipients in science, mathematics and technology to the Faculty of Education to share their expertise with teachers in training.