Five Big Ideas to Reimagine Canada’s Global Cooperation

The world needs bold, forward-looking ideas to meet today’s complex global challenges. As part of a 2025 Call for Big Ideas, Cooperation Canada invited changemakers to propose catalytic concepts that reimagine the future of Canadian international cooperation whether through new narratives, funding models, organizational approaches or ways of working. 

Five big Ideas were chosen to be developed into short papers and published on our website to spark dialogue and inspire innovation across the sector, with two chosen to be spotlighted and discussed at the upcoming 2025 Cooperation Canada’s Leaders’ Forum. 

We’re incredibly grateful for all the submissions we received and truly appreciate the thoughtfulness and innovation behind each proposal. Ideas like these continue to inspire hope and progress in our sector. 

Check out the winning ideas below! 

Localization Accelerator Fund 

Presented at the 2025 Leaders Forum, the Localization Accelerator Fund, by Ralph Haddad, is a pooled funding mechanism that enables Canadian philanthropic foundations to deliver flexible, multi-year financing directly to civil society organizations in the Global South.  

Designed to move funding faster, more equitably and with local leadership at the center, the Fund combines private capital, shared technical services and locally led networks into one streamlined platform. With a goal to cut average funding cycle times by 35% and ensure that most decisions and dollars reach refugee-, women- and youth-led organizations, the initiative reimagines how trust-based partnerships can scale.  

Making Aid Visible 

Many people are sceptical of the value of international assistance (commonly referred to as aid); they don’t see or are not convinced by our current reporting and messages. This proposal, by Paul Hagerman, presented at the 2025 Leaders Forum, to Make Aid Visible by combining results over several years from civil society organizations (CSOs) and Global Affairs Canada (GAC) working in the same region and honing effective messages and channels to convey these results to people outside the international cooperation sector. 

Join the Journey: Canada’s Partnerships in Action 

Join the Journey: Canada’s Partnerships in Action, by Palash Sanyal, proposes a national civic engagement platform that connects Canadians to real-time updates from Canadian-supported international initiatives.  

By matching participants with projects abroad and collecting their annual reflections, the initiative transforms aid from an abstract concept into a shared, relational experience — fostering public trust, participatory learning and a renewed sense of ownership in Canada’s global cooperation efforts. 

A Big Idea for Co-responsability, not Solidarity 

A Big Idea for Co-responsibility, not Solidarity, by Milagros Santeiro, President of Red Encuentro, proposes a shift from “solidarity” to co-responsibility as the foundation of international cooperation. Red Encuentro envisions a system grounded in resource mutualization and economic autonomy, where Southern organizations co-design, co-implement and co-own development processes. 

The proposal includes piloting mutualized cooperation nodes, rooted in the Global South and connected through horizontal planning cells: diverse North–South teams that jointly plan, fund and implement projects under shared accountability frameworks, beyond donor-driven logics. 

Narrative Sovereignty Labs 

Global crises are too often narrated through a lens that reduces Southern perspectives to suffering, reinforcing stereotypes and eroding trust in international cooperation. Narrative Sovereignty Labs, by Yixuan Ma, presents a transformative solution: a co-governed, living library of modular storytelling assets—photography, footage and soundscapes—co-produced through a network of continent-based Labs in partnership with independent media partners across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.  

By hardcoding equity into creation, distribution and compensation, the Labs replace extractive storytelling practices with dignified representation.