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It’s 1am on a Friday and I’m on a makeshift dance floor at the home of Joel and Dana Solomon on Cortes Island, British Columbia, 100 miles north of Vancouver. A lovely house that caresses both forest and ocean, it’s a perfect spot for a party.
The guy to my left is a life/business coach and investor. He’s come to the Social Venture Institute (SVI) Hollyhock to see, learn, listen. And, apparently, to dance. The chatty dude to my right was the CEO of a renowned Vancouver nonprofit and has now started his own organization. He talks to me about the ever-growing landscape for social enterprise, his visionary cadence in sync with the boom boom boom of the 80s playlist. The rest of the gang are spread out across the house or sitting by the open fire pit in the front yard, the meta-chatter around social change a distinct harmonizing accompaniment to the evening.
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Measuring social and economic impacts is vital to the growth of innovative community solutions
On or around October 31, the global population exceeded seven billion people. That’s significant for many reasons, including the fact that that’s a lot of mouths to feed. However, there are many layers of complexity behind the sheer magnitude of this figure, and most of us in developed countries are blissfully ignorant of them.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that everything you bought was “Made in Taiwan” or “Made in Japan”. It was the era of All in the Family, Big Yellow Taxi and The Female Eunuch. Social taboos went mainstream, environmental consciousness came out of the shadows, and traditional institutions began to lose influence. Our mothers drove us to weekend activities in smoke-filled cars, dads liberally sprayed pesticides on the yards where we played, and they both let us roam the neighbourhood on bikes – unsupervised – and without helmets, no less. Seems almost radical now. But not as radical as what’s taking place in Asia.
