Opportunities
Canadian Leadership in Ageing Awards
The National Institute on Ageing (NIA) at Toronto Metropolitan University and Entente Education Canada are hosting the 2026 Canadian Leadership in Ageing Awards competition.
- The graduate award ($1,000) will be presented to a graduate student enrolled at a Canadian college or university who has demonstrated leadership in policy development or advocacy in support of older adults and healthy ageing.
- The undergraduate award ($1,000) will be presented to an undergraduate student enrolled at a Canadian college or university who has shown exemplary leadership in the area of older adults and healthy ageing through a project or research in the topic area.
Both of the awards will be offered Canada-wide and will highlight the leadership students have taken to address challenges and increase opportunities associated with Canada’s ageing population in the past year.
Entry Period:
September 21, 2026 – October 16, 2026
How to Enter:
To apply for the Canadian Leadership in Ageing Award, please submit a cover letter (1-2 pages) to info.nia@torontomu.ca. In your cover letter, describe your leadership in policy development/advocacy or project/research and its positive impact on older adults.
Please include one of the following subject lines in your email to indicate your award category:
- Graduate – Canadian Leadership in Ageing Award
- Undergraduate – Canadian Leadership in Ageing Award
Additionally, within the body of your email, confirm whether you are an undergraduate or graduate student, and specify your university affiliation.
Undergraduate Award Winner – Dawson Sheehan
As a fourth-year nursing student at Mount Royal University, Dawson is committed to improving the health, safety, and dignity of older adults through evidence-based practice and research-driven innovation. His leadership over the past two years has centered on advancing the early detection and management of elder abuse in the emergency department, a widespread yet underrecognized public health issue.
Dawson’s current project, Developing a Nurse-Administered Screening Tool for Detecting Elder Abuse in the Emergency Department, originated from a research gap identified through a recent scoping review that he co-authored with Dr. Mohamed El Hussein. This article was recently published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing (2025). The review revealed six existing tools used by nurses in emergency departments, yet none demonstrated sufficient reliability, feasibility, or validation for widespread clinical use. Guided by this evidence, Dawson designed a nurse-led, evidence-informed digital screening tool that integrates a brief subjective and objective assessment with an embedded response protocol to ensure that at-risk older adults receive timely intervention.
Graduate Award Winner – Shanuki Goonasekera
Shanuki is a co-founder of The Age Collective (TAC) and is pursuing a Master of Public Health (MPH) in Social & Behavioural Health Sciences with an Aging Specialization at the University of Toronto. Now in her second year of MPH, Shanuki remains committed to advancing equity through creative, evidence-informed advocacy.
Through TAC, Shanuki has used storytelling to address ageism and connect lived experience with research and policy. TAC has gathered stories from more than 40 individuals across Alberta and Ontario, transforming them into 38 written narratives and photographs, 9 videos, and 27 infographics that have reached over 150,000 people online. These stories capture the full complexity of aging – they do not ignore grief, decline, or loss, but also highlight strength, creativity, and connection. By sharing the full range of what it means to grow older, TAC aims to move beyond a one-dimensional portrayal of aging as decline and bring visibility to the joys, possibilities, and depth of later life.
Shanuki recognizes the importance of providing communities with tools to address ageism and promote healthy aging. Since November 2022, Shanuki has volunteered as a Committee Member for the Ageism Hub with the Edmonton Age Friendly Alliance, where she contributed to public consultations that informed the Federal, Provincial and Territorial Ministers Responsible for Seniors Forum on ageism, and co-developed an ageism toolkit to help individuals and communities initiate dialogue about ageism in their own communities.