1. Communication Strategies: You will enhance your interpersonal skills, intercultural competence, and digital fluency by engaging in project-based activities that encourage critical thinking and collaboration.
2. Computer Applications for Social Innovation: You will explore various current software applications supporting community development and social innovation, learning essential networking, collaboration, research, and project management tools alongside them.
3. Indigenous Knowledge and Leadership: You will on Indigenous community practices, exploring traditional knowledge systems, protocols, ceremonies, relationships with the natural environment, worldviews, leadership structures, and international agreements on a local, federal, and global scale.
4. Foundations of Social Innovation: This course provides an understanding of how new ideas are generated, developed, and applied to address social inequality through community-based initiatives, introducing you to various social enterprises and community development agencies, while emphasizing values, principles, concepts, and strategies for effecting change.
5. Financial Literacy: This course will introduce you to different banking products, budget creation techniques to strengthen their financial knowledge and skills – teaching you how to manage income, personal debt, and track expenses.
6. Project Management for Social Innovation and Community Development: This course provides the fundamental aspects and principles of project planning including initiating, planning, executing and controlling a project from start to finish, on budget and on time.

1. Financial Documentation: In this course, you will learn fundamental accounting principles used in community development and social entrepreneurship, including budgets, cash flow projections, monthly financial statements, and annual reports.
2. Communication for Social Innovation: You will further develop their communication skills in social innovation and community development by mastering professional, inclusive, collaborative, and empathetic communication techniques across various written and spoken channels to effectively engage diverse audiences.
3. Social Innovation Capstone: You will be matched with a community organization to undertake a project addressing the client’s challenge, providing work-integrated experience and an opportunity to work closely with a potential employer.
4. Applied Economics: You will be introduced to different perspectives on, and examples of economic reconciliation, and throughout this course, you will develop your own understanding of reconciliation.

Term 4

1. Current Trends and Best Practices in Community Development: You will study the activities and functions of community development organizations and explore ways to analyze common problems, manage strategic planning, and create a positive culture in a flexible organization.
2. Funding Community Initiatives: You will expand the skills required to participate in the full cycle of funding proposals, including defining and documenting business models, responding to Requests for Proposals (RFPs), maintaining organizational transparency and accountability, and negotiating with financial institutions and project stakeholders.
3. Healthy and Sustainable Communities: You will be introduced to the universally accepted determinants and models of human health and the health of the planet. The course will introduce various schools of thought about creating healthy and sustainable communities through design and development.
4. Governance Structures: You will be introduced to a range of governance models traditionally adopted in community development organizations. This focus will expand to incorporate innovative governance models used in social innovation organizations.
5. Community Development Capstone 2: You will be matched with a community development organization, or coalition of organizations, which will serve as mentors for the project and receive the project design for their own use. The team will define the project, design a plan for completion, assign responsibilities, monitor progress, and present the completed project to the organizations, the class, and invited guests.
6. Research and Managing Projects: You will explore human resources functions and operations management using examples from community development and social enterprise settings.

Term 4 of Indigenous Social Entrepreneurship includes a selection of electives to help shape the foundation for your upcoming career:

The total cost of Social Innovation and Community Development for the first year is about $7,430. The prices are broken down into tuition ($5,175); books, laptop, and supplies ($2,000); and health and dental coverage ($255).

The second-year Community Development stream costs about $5,377, which is broken down into tuition ($4,877) and supplies ($500).

The second-year Indigenous Social Entrepreneurship stream costs about $5,377, which is broken down into tuition ($4,877) and supplies ($500).

For a two-year diploma, the total cost over two years will be about $12,807.

If you need help locating financial aid, you can connect with one of our Navigation Coaches or the Financial Aid Officer through the Indigenous Student Support Team. They can also help you navigate processes for awards, scholarships and bursaries, which you can start researching to help offset the cost of tuition.

Some Indigenous-specific and entrepreneurship-specific awards include:

1. Business Council of Manitoba Indigenous Education Awards ($2,000+)
2. Canada Post Indigenous Education Incentive Award ($2,000)
3. Indspire Post-Secondary Education Bursary Award (multiple)
4. The Southern Chiefs’ Organization Every Child Matters Scholarship ($1,500)
5. Manitoba Hydro Bursaries (multiple)

The Library and Academic Services have a laptop-loaning program for a period of 4 weeks in case you need more time to secure a reliable laptop. You can see the laptop specifications here if you’re not sure what you’re looking for.

Social Innovation and Community Development starts on August 26, 2024, at the Exchange District Campus in Winnipeg.

Delivery is based on course by course. Some courses will require you to be present in-person, and other courses will allow you to work remotely as part of the college’s current hybrid approach to content delivery.

You’ll need a Future Student Account with RRC Polytech so you can keep track of any document submissions you make. You can sign up here and everything will be displayed on your account. You can submit documents via PDF files using a digital signature or you can scan your physical paper document using a scanner or a scanner on your phone. Linked here are tutorials on both creating a digital signature in Google Docs and using the scanner on iPhones in the Notes app.

You’ll need to provide proof of completion of the admission requirements within 15 days from when you applied.

You can check out the program explorer page on our website for Social Innovation and Community Development as a source for accessing all the information you need. If you prefer to talk to a person, you can contact an Indigenous Student Recruiter at indigenous.recruitment@rrc.ca.