Charity of Choice Announcement
Pride Toronto’s Charity of Choice 2025
Canvas Programs is thrilled to announce that we have been chosen for the honoured position of Charity of Choice for Pride Toronto’s 2025 celebrations. This esteemed role is selected by Pride Toronto’s community advisory panel, in recognition of leadership and achievements in human rights issues, based on demonstrated impactful work in combatting discrimination, promoting equality, and addressing violence, abuse, and the criminalization of 2SLGBTQIA+ people and identities.
In 2025, Canvas Programs will lead the Pride Parade, host a station at the street fair and will represent and uplift our communities as year-round ambassadors.
This honour is a testament to the urgent need for 2SLGBTQIA+ inclusion education in the face of rising hate. For over a decade, Canvas Programs has been providing empathy-based education on 2SLGBTQIA+ inclusion and consent to more than 50,000 participants in schools, community spaces, and workplaces across Southern Ontario.
Creating Compassionate Futures
In the past two years, we have seen a steep rise in transphobia and homophobia in schools, compared to previous years. These high levels of queerphobia are occurring alongside the largest numbers of queer and trans youth who are openly out in classrooms. We’ve witnessed protests against 2SLGBTQIA+ rights and a growing movement attempting to erase youth from conversations about queer and trans identities. Requests for our programs have also been sharply growing each year to a point where they are exceeding our current financial capacity. The rights of trans youth are at risk in a way we have not seen in recent years, making of 2SLGBTQIA+ inclusion programming more essential than ever.
Though this is a challenging time, Canvas Programs is looking towards brighter futures. In recognition of this honour, we are inviting our community to invest in creating compassionate futures for youth who are experiencing transphobia and homophobia in schools. Together, we can ensure that more youth receive the education, affirmation and representation we all needed while growing up.
The Power of Representation
At the heart of our work is our incredible team of 2SLGBTQIA+ facilitators, who provide youth with positive examples of queer joy, and meet queer role models who reflect their identities. These leaders create the compassionate futures that queer and trans youth deserve. We asked our facilitators about the futures they hope our programs will create for 2SLGBTQIA+ identified youth:
“I envision a world where queer kids know that they can become happy queer adults. Having queer role models can be life-saving and life-affirming. It can do so much to challenge single story narratives where we see one queer experience in the media, and we don’t see a diversity of experiences.”
“I envision a world where queer kids can exist without having to hide themselves away, without having to fear their parents’ reaction to their identity. I envision a space where I can walk into a classroom and everybody has already had these conversations before, they have started to learn about queerness, consent, race, disability, so when I come into a classroom, I’m not preaching to them and having these conversations for the first time, but instead these children, who should be experts about their bodies and identities, lead these conversations”
Join us in creating compassionate futures for queer and trans youth. Your donation helps bring vital inclusion education into classrooms, equips teachers with the tools to challenge discrimination, and ensures that 2SLGBTQIA+ youth have safer spaces to grow into a more compassionate future. Give today and help us build a future where every young person feels seen, safe, and celebrated.
For Media Support:
Bree Jiang , Communications Coordinator (she/they) – Bree@canvasprograms.com