About

 The signing into law of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom in 1982 was a seminal event for Sussan Ekrami, a native of Iran who had recently chosen vibrant, multicultural and peaceful Canada as her new home. 

Steeped in the rich cultural heritage of her land of birth and animated by its ancient tradition of respect for human rights, famously exhibited by Cyrus the Great's Declaration of Human Rights circa 550 bca, Sussan set on the task of creating a forum for bringing together Canadians of various cultural backgrounds as a means of celebrating their common human experience in the spirit of the new Charter and the old Declaration. 

The symbolic vehicle that best lends itself to the balance between the old and the new, it occurred to Sussan, is the equinox which she saw as a gift from Mother Nature. The equinox is when day and night are of equal length and it happens in spring and autumn of the year. Sussan thought of this balance and cycle of renewal as a fitting reflection of the Canadian bond of citizenship. It also kept her true to her origins where the vernal equinox, Norooz in Persian, has been celebrated at the beginning of each year for millennia. 

With the support of generous leaders of the community, Sussan's contagious enthusiasm paid off in 1985 when the New Day Foundation-the forerunner of today's Norooz Foundation--was officially registered as a non-profit organization with Sussan Ekrami and Dr. Cuyler Young Jr., the then Director of the Royal Ontario Museum, as co founders. The first board of the Foundation consisted of distinguished members of academic and professional communities of Canada, a composition that continues to date. The first honorary chairman of the board was Ambassador George Ignatieff who was the Chancellor of the University of Toronto at the time 

The Foundation, which has since been renamed The NoRooz Educational Foundation, received charitable status in 1989. Since its inception it has focused on cultural education by using various means of creative expression such as poetry, dance and music. It has developed and implemented an extensive outreach program in the form of The Equinox Award, a competition among high school students. The pilot phase of this competition has been running successfully in the York region. The goal of the Foundation is to extend the Equinox Award competition to all high schools in the York region and later, in succession, to high schools in the greater Toronto area, Ontario, and finally to other provinces of Canada.