Resources and publications
COSTI undertakes, both independently and in cooperation with other organizations, innovative research and studies into the changing needs of newcomers and the disadvantaged.
COSTI has a mandate to inform public policy makers and the community at large about issues affecting newcomers and how they can best be addressed. At COSTI, we believe that excellence in service is best achieved by educating and working collaboratively with clients, ethno-specific communities, politicians and policy makers, educational institutions, media, and the community at large, so that collectively, the needs of individuals and their families are met through improved service delivery.
COSTI undertakes and participates in several public education initiatives, including presentations, hosting international dignitaries interested in understanding settlement and employment services to newcomers and public awareness and training projects.
Blueprint for IRER facing Intimate Partner Violence
COSTI, in partnership with Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE), recently completed a Gender-Based Violence research project that delivered a blueprint that defines effective, culturally safe, and replicable components that aims to deliver wraparound services for women from Immigrant, Refugee, Ethnocultural and Racialized communities facing Gender-Based Violence.
To download the report, click here.
At COSTI, we are dedicated to enhancing the safety and support available to women from racialized and immigrant communities. Our project, the “Evaluation of Wraparound Services for Immigrant, Refugee, Non-Status, and Ethnocultural Women Facing Gender-Based Violence,” funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE), aims to address inequities in access to Gender-Based Violence (GBV) services across Canada.
This four-year initiative, which concluded in September 2023, focused on developing, implementing, and evaluating a program model that offers support to GBV survivors from racialized and newcomer communities in the Greater Toronto Area. Our goal was to create a detailed program blueprint that defines effective, culturally safe, and replicable components. This blueprint will be shared by WAGE for adoption by organizations nationwide.
Our project has three primary sets of outcomes that directly benefit our community members:
Service Outcomes: We’re committed to delivering high-quality, evidence-based, and culturally safe services that result in client satisfaction.
GBV Survivor Outcomes: Our efforts aim to empower survivors, reduce their risk, and enhance their safety through knowledge, skills, and a deeper understanding of GBV issues within their families and networks.
System Outcomes: We aim for organizations across Canada to adopt our evidence-based program model, leading to improved services and outcomes for GBV survivors.
As we reached the midway point of this project, an external evaluation team conducted a mid-term evaluation, revealing an “overall satisfaction with the current project setup.” Our research design and data collection methods were approved by the Community Research Ethics Office (CREO).
Research: A key aspect of our project was a community-based research design, where service-providing agencies and GBV survivors actively participated in designing data collection instruments, defining the program model, and leading the research project.
Data Privacy: Survey data was collected by LogicalOutcomes, a Canadian nonprofit organization and the External Evaluation Team of COSTI’s Gender-Based Violence Community Research project. All survey responses were anonymous and confidential, used exclusively for impact evaluation and service improvement. Answers were combined with others to ensure privacy of respondents. Individual-level information is not shared unless specific consent was provided at the outset of specific surveys.
For more information or questions about surveys by LogicalOutcomes, please contact Dr. Gillian Kerr, the lead evaluator, at gillian@logicaloutcomes.net or call her at 647-478-5634 or 1-877-819-6058 (Toll-free).
Our Partners: COSTI, as the principal investigator, collaborated with four other organizations to co-design and implement this project. Working together with these “project hubs,” we provided direct services to GBV survivors within the GTA. These hubs, some single agencies with multiple departments and others formal networks of partnering organizations, offered a range of services, including intake, information, safety, short-term counselling, and referrals, depending on available resources.
Project Hub
COSTI (Principal investigator), Toronto.
La Maison Toronto in Scarborough
Settlement Assistance and Family Support Services (SAFSS), Scarborough
Safe Centre of Peel (SCOP), Brampton
York Region Centre for Community Safety (YRCCS), Markham
Our partners at York Region Centre for Community Safety (YRCCS) and La Maison have found the project’s tools to be effective in gauging client safety, empowering survivors, and fostering hope. They believe that our project has the potential to create a community of best practices for addressing gender-based violence.
We are proud of the progress we’ve made in empowering women and look forward to furthering our mission. Thank you for your support and partnership.
Negotiating Homelessness
This research explores the lived experiences of immigrants and refugees in Toronto as they transition from homelessness into stable housing through COSTI’s Streets to Homes program. Grounded in first‑person narratives, the research reveals how structural barriers, such as discrimination, lack of affordable housing, limited knowledge of Canadian systems, and the impacts of trauma, shape newcomers’ pathways into and out of homelessness.
This study underscores the importance of culturally competent, compassionate, and client‑centered support, highlighting how approaches rooted in dignity and human connection, including the philosophy of Ubuntu, can significantly improve housing stability and integration outcomes. This research is vital because it brings forward often‑invisible voices, exposes gaps in mainstream housing services, and offers evidence‑based guidance for strengthening policy and practice to better support immigrant and refugee communities.
Submission to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration
This submission highlighted the challenges newcomers face in Canada, focusing on labour-market barriers, citizenship requirements and gaps in government coordination. The organization emphasized that better pre‑arrival support and broader strategies for both skilled and non‑skilled immigrants were needed. It also noted that updates to citizenship policies, such as residency definitions and fee structures, were overdue. COSTI further stressed that inadequate funding for settlement services in Ontario had limited the sector’s ability to effectively support new Canadians.