Value for Money: Changing the way we measure results
Measuring social and economic impacts is vital to the growth of innovative community solutions Every day, Shaun Loney sees positive change in the lives of his co-workers as a result of their participation at Building Urban Industries for Local Development (BUILD)....Food for thought: When it comes to food, scarcity is the new normal
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...
SVI: a refreshing twist on social change
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...
Self-leadership for social entrepreneurs
After eight years of planning, development, hoping and dreaming, this month the W2 Community Media Arts Centre finally opened its doors. This ambitious project aims to serve the working class community of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside—Canada’s poorest postal code, and...
The Long Shadow of Asian Growth: Challenges for the global sustainability agenda
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 andThe Female Eunuch. Social taboos went mainstream, environmental consciousness came out of the shadows, and...
Women in Quebec: Pioneering social change
This month, on the 8th of March, Canada joins many other countries around the world to celebrate International Women’s Day. Originally called International Working Women’s Day, it was first celebrated on the 19th of March, 1911 in Germany after a declaration...Chemistry lessons for creating a social finance reaction
Perhaps chemistry has some lessons to teach us about how to catalyze the connections between the demand for, and supply of, social finance. A chemical reaction occurs where specific amount(s) of reactant(s) combine to create (expected or unexpected) products. This...
New partnership to build Canada’s impact-investing marketplace
Canada, like many other jurisdictions, is at an innovation crossroads. The global economy is finding a new normal. Increasingly complex societal challenges are crippling communities, education, and health care systems and the environment. These challenges require a...