Giving back and being involved in the community is a big part of CSE’s culture and values. We are a skilled, dedicated workforce, and are fortunate to work where we do. Our employees care about building and enhancing our community, and they want to share their time and knowledge with those who can benefit from it.
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Community outreach program
CSE believes an engaged workforce means a more positive work environment.
That’s why we have a growing community outreach program that allows us to share our knowledge, skills and abilities.
The partnerships that we build allow us to help young Canadians develop skills in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and promote technical literacy for all Canadians. CSE employees volunteer as mentors, speakers or instructors in these programs.
See below for how we’re involved in community sponsorships, partnerships and workshops.
Sponsorships
Hackergal
Hackergal is a Canadian, not-for-profit organization with a mission to introduce middle school girls to coding.
Since 2017, CSE has supported Hackergal by sponsoring their cross-Canada hackathons, as well as providing CSE employees to act as mentors.
Find out more about Hackergal
CyberTitan
CyberTitan is an online cyber defence competition aimed at Canadian youth in grades 7-12.
Teams must pit their skills against thousands of others from across North America. The challenges are based on scenarios a real cyber defence team might encounter, like digital forensics and vulnerability management.
CSE has been a proud sponsor of the CyberTitan competition since 2019, with CSE volunteers mentoring teams throughout the event.
Find out more about CyberTitan
Partnerships
Technovation Girls
Technovation Girls is a global challenge that encourages middle school and high school girls to become tech entrepreneurs.
CSE volunteers serve as mentors to the teams, helping the students learn algorithmic thinking and programming, as well as strategies for pitching their ideas to others.
CanHack
CanHack is an online cyber security competition for high school students. It is run by the DMZ business incubator at Ryerson University.
Participants must reverse engineer, break, hack and decrypt their way out of a series of digital challenges.
In 2019, for the first time, CSE employees participated as technical guides, logging in to an online platform to provide advice and guidance to participating teams.
Cyber Days
In November 2019, CSE teamed up with the Information and Communications Technology Council to host “Cyber Days” at two elementary schools in Ottawa.
Teams of students took on the role of “Cyber Security Specialists” working to secure the computer of the “Prime Minister”, while following Government of Canada cyber security policies.
About 100 students (grades 4-6) participated in Cyber Days, supported by 10 CSE employees.
Workshops
Raspberry Pi workshops
A 10-week workshop for high school students involving Raspberry Pi computers. The workshop is designed to teach the fundamentals of computer science and basic coding skills.
During the 2019-2020 school year six CSE volunteers taught four Raspberry Pi workshops in three local schools, reaching approximately 100 students.
Scratch animation workshops
CSE’s Scratch animation workshops, launched in fall 2018, are taught by CSE employees to local elementary school students.
Scratch is an online platform that teaches kids the basics of coding through the creation of animated videos and games.
By blocking together instructions for characters, backgrounds, sounds, and more, kids learn to code while having fun with animation.
Workshops for local schools
CSE employees have delivered, and even developed, several workshops for students in local schools.
The intention of these workshops is to inspire an early interest in STEM fields through engaging and interactive programming.
In return, our employees gain new personal and professional skills, and a sense of engagement with our community.
Other ways we are engaged
Academic outreach
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, as a part of CSE, has an Cyber Skills Development team. They support cyber security career development initiatives, events and education campaigns with GC departments and academia and offer resources such as the post-secondary cyber security related programs guide.
Speaking opportunities
CSE’s industry leading experts can often be found sharing their wealth of knowledge at various speaking engagements across the country.
Guest judges
CSE employees have unique skill sets. That is why they are often invited by community partners to be guest judges at events like fairs, competitions, hack‑a‑thons and more.
Charitable giving
Every year, our employees generously support the Government of Canada Workplace Charitable Campaign. On average, CSE employees donate $300,000 annually to support local and national charities.
Fundraising activities include trivia nights, volleyball tournaments, BBQs and auctions, which allow our employees to have a little fun and show they care about our community.
For this charitable work, we are proud to have received a number of awards from the central agency overseeing the charitable campaign of the whole government.
Related links:
Contact us
Community outreach
Email:
Community.communaute@cse-cst.gc.ca
