About the Fellowship
The Pathy Foundation Fellowship is a unique opportunity for young changemakers to design and implement an initiative to strengthen a community they care about.
Where Your Commitment to Community Becomes a Catalyst for Change
The Pathy Foundation Fellowship is an intensive, 12-month, experiential learning opportunity for graduating university students across Canada who have an idea for social change in a community they have a meaningful connection with. Fellows are provided with comprehensive training, dedicated wrap-around supports, and $50,000 in funding to make a sustainable impact in their chosen community and to support their growth as active and effective leaders and changemakers.
This year-long Fellowship is designed for students who have:
- The capacity and potential to develop as effective changemakers
- A meaningful connection with a community anywhere in the world
- An innovative idea of how this community could be strengthened
Benefits of Becoming a Fellow
Professional Development
You will learn how to pitch, plan, budget, implement, evaluate, and report on a socially-innovative initiative. You will develop as a leader and gain valuable connections and in-demand skills as you kickstart your career.
Personal Growth
With personal leadership coaching, you will tap into and enhance your capacities as an individual and values-driven changemaker. You will set and achieve areas of personal growth and development and build competencies that will serve you for life.
Community Engagement
You will learn how to find creative solutions to community priorities through tangible participatory tools. You will be introduced to leading development approaches, practices and principles.
Our Story
Mr. Laurence G. Pathy, a Montreal-based philanthropist and business leader, was deeply influenced by his formative learning years at Princeton University, where he experienced the transformative power of leadership, service, and experiential learning. Inspired by these values, he envisioned a program that would empower young Canadians to engage meaningfully with communities, both locally and globally, through immersive, community-driven initiatives.
In 2015, this vision came to life through the creation of the Pathy Foundation Fellowship (originally launched as the OceanPath Fellowship), a collaboration between the Pathy Family Foundation and Coady Institute at St. Francis Xavier University.
The Pathy Foundation Fellowship’s commitment to nurturing leadership, fostering personal and professional development, and building capacity for sustainable change is a natural amplification of Mr. Pathy’s well-established reputation as a humble and discerning leader with a passion for contributing to better futures. His goal in establishing the Fellowship was not only to fund community-driven impact, but to cultivate a generation of thoughtful, skilled, and courageous changemakers who are equipped to lead with integrity and heart.
