Give it up for peace
#GiveItUp4Peace is PeaceGeeks' annual charity challenge—give up something for the month & raise money to help communities at risk use tech for peace.
Snapp summary report

Over a month, our staff, friends, and followers are giving up things of varying importance to increase awareness about the difficulties experienced by refugees and other individuals who are forced to go without. Their endeavours are directed towards generating funds for PeaceGeeks initiatives that aid communities who have had to relinquish everything due to conflict and displacement. We saw people give up sleeping in their bed, using the internet, wearing shoes, drinking a cold beer, and even having a morning coffee. All in the name of supporting peace, resettlement, integration, and inclusion.

In 2021, we re-envisioned Give It Up 4 Peace to focus on the experiences of refugees and newcomers once they arrive in Canada. We sought to respond to a 2019 report by Vancity that indicated, while 90% of newcomers say they are glad they immigrated to Canada, and 86% feel generally welcomed by Canadians, 62% admit experiencing significant barriers to employment, including bias and racism in hiring. We decided to utilize SNAPP, a mentorship platform we piloted, to help break down barriers newcomers may face when seeking to enter the job market here. Sometimes, all it takes is a human connection to help open doorways.

We invited professionals at Microsoft, Unbounce, Hootsuite, Traction on Demand, East Side Games, Accenture, SolvedAF, and other Canadian companies to volunteer their time to connect directly with a newcomer. Each local professional and newcomer pair shared insights, forged new relationships, and connected on topics like culture, employment, and language skills. For each hour of time an employee donated, the company would match with a donation of $60.

In total, the campaign raised $44,163, and engaged 144 mentors from 8 companies, who donated their time to connect with 43 newcomers. While volunteer mentors initially only needed to commit one hour of their time, many continued to meet with their newcomer matches on an ongoing basis, and a number of the newcomers ended up with surprise offers of employment from the experience.

Welcome to Canada
All encompassing
The app is a newcomer’s one-stop-shop for settling in Canada. Whether they're looking for a job, registering for the Medical Services Plan (MSP) or just even just researching where to migrate, the app gives users to the tools to successfully jumpstart their life in Canada, from making the decision to move to Canada  the point in which they feel confident in their status as a new Canadian.
Welcome to Canada is
Multilingual
We are working very hard to have its content available in English, French, and Arabic. PeaceGeeks is currently translating the app into Chinese Traditional, Chinese Simplified, Korean, Punjabi, and Tagalog
Welcome to Canada
Relevant
Through an anonymous questionnaire, the app helps newcomers identify their most urgent tasks and recommends them to their most relevant information and services.
Welcome to Canada
Actionable
We help newcomers navigate their settlement journey step-by-step by providing intuitive recommendations for their next steps, as well as offering Maps compatibility to get them where they need to go.
Welcome to Canada
Secure
We are passionate about protecting data security and privacy, especially for communities at risk. Users do not need to provide any personal information or create an account within the app, and they can delete their user data at any time. An optional questionnaire will tailor the wealth of information within the app to the user’s needs while respecting their anonymity, alternatively, users can navigate the app through its general organization of information.
Community Resilience Workshops
These workshops facilitate open dialogue among citizens in under-resourced, rural, and marginalized communities to deliberate local challenges and responses.
Capacity Building Workshops
These workshops equip content producers, activists, community-based organizations and civil society organizations with the skills, resources, and networks to create and amplify alternative narratives.
Artists-in-Residence
Meshkat Community works with a handful of artists every year who are funded and mentored to create art — fine arts, music, videos, performing arts, creative writing, and more — engaging with various themes of peace and prevention of extremism.
Peace Awards
The annual Meshkat Peace Awards recognize communities and organizations making outstanding contributions to the creation of content promoting critical, creative thinking, and constructive dialogue to strengthen social cohesion.
Digital Youth Network
The DYN provides young Jordanians between with the means, tools, skills, and knowledge to meaningfully engage in digital contributions to peace in safe, positive, and responsible ways.
Joint Action Plans
Developed by alliances within and across local communities, Joint Action Plans promote common objectives through community based activities, digital campaigns, awareness campaigns, and capacity building workshops for women and youth.
Website
The Meshkat Community website aggregates content promoting social cohesion in the MENA region, and creates a digital hub for people to share their content, observations, and reflections on effective responses to harmful online narratives.

Social Media
Meshkat Community creates, curates and shares content consistent with the objectives of Meshkat Community through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube to inspire online citizens to promote social inclusion and challenge hate.

Settlement 2.0 & 3.0 Reports and resources
Together, Settlement 2.0 and 3.0 provide a strategy for a brighter future for the sector that prioritizes empowering newcomers to be agents in their own settlement journey and offers actionable steps to build the overall capacity of the sector to embrace innovation towards more successfully and sustainably supporting newcomers over time.
Settlement 3.0
Innovations in our DNA (Full report)
Learning from the factors created by the COVID-19 pandemic and settlement experiences across regions, Settlement 3.0 explored how innovation and tech can best support newcomers in their settlement journey from pre-arrival to full and meaningful integration.
Innovations in our DNA (Executive Summary)
Learning from the factors created by the COVID-19 pandemic and settlement experiences across regions, Settlement 3.0 explored how innovation and tech can best support newcomers in their settlement journey from pre-arrival to full and meaningful integration.
Settlement 2.0
Innovations in our DNA (Full report)
The Settlement 2.0 Project strives to understand how the settlement sector can embrace tech and innovation in service delivery and strategic principles. Take a look at PeaceGeeks’ final recommendations.
Innovations in our DNA (Summary)
As the immigrant and refugee-serving sector has gone #suddenlyremote during COVID-19, take a look at our Settlement 2.0 conversation starter on innovation and design to ensure positive newcomer settlement outcomes.
Community consultations report
This report outlines the second phase of the Settlement 2.0 project, undertaken in partnership between SFU Public Square and PeaceGeeks Society.
Situational analysis
This report provides a snapshot of the current state of the technological and innovative capacities of the immigrant and refugee-serving sector in Canada.