2025 Exchange Conference

Call for Proposals Open

Submission Deadline: December 13, 2024

The 2025 Exchange Conference annual event designed for OMSSA Members and partners to exchange ideas and to share work they are excited about. Help us build the program by proposing a presentation!

The audience for the Exchange Conference is made up of first line staff, managers, and supervisors (about 75%). Senior leaders comprise a smaller proportion of the attendees (about 25%).

With 2025 marking OMSSA's 75th anniversary, we invite those submitting a proposal to also consider topics that might be relevant to this celebration, or that reflect on service delivery (this is optional, and presentations do not need to meet this criteria to be considered).

Presentation formats include:

• A full presentation (70 mins inclusive of 20min Q&A, 90 minutes total)
• Part of a themed panel presentation (45 minutes inclusive of Q&A; will be paired with another presentation; 90 minutes total)

Proposals will be adjudicated by the Exchange Conference Planning Committee composed of OMSSA Members and staff. The committee will assess your presentation based on the following criteria:

• Proposal meets format requirements
• Relevant to the core service areas of OMSSA Members (children’s services, housing and homelessness, employment and income supports, and/or emergency social services)
• Demonstrates a novel or innovative approach that can be replicated by other OMSSA Members

We strongly encourage you to consider ways you will engage the audience with your presentations. Where possible, we would like presentations to contain an element that draws on the knowledge of the attendees in order to generate clear takeaways for both the presenters and audience members alike.

The offer to submit proposals is open to both OMSSA Members and our partner organizations providing, researching, or otherwise connected to the human services. If you have any questions about your submission, please email education@omssa.com.

Important:

• Please note for 90-minute sessions we will permit up to a maximum of four speakers.
• For 45-minute partial presentations we will permit up to a maximum of two speakers.

We will work with those submitting partial presentations to group them with another partial presentation that contains a similar theme.

Evaluation criteria will be weighted therefore no single criteria will be used to determine inclusion and/or exclusion in the conference.

Please note: due to our limited budget to bring in speakers from outside the area of human services delivery in Ontario, we will not be accepting proposals from leadership or motivational speakers.

OMSSA is guided by the principles of anti-racism, equity, and Truth and Reconciliation when inviting proposals for the Exchange Conference. OMSSA encourages nominations that reflect the diversity of its membership, in particular from individuals from racialized groups and Indigenous Peoples to ensure that our proposals are reflective of the racial diversity of its membership and the communities OMSSA Members serve. We strongly encourage submissions that promote the work of Indigenous and other equity-deserving staff, or submissions for projects and programs that are focused on assisting Indigenous and other equity-deserving communities.

Submission Deadline: December 13, 2024
We will contact all those who have submitted a proposal by the end of January to let you know if your submission was accepted.

Submit Your Proposal