12:00pm - 1:00pm Eastern Time

The complex environmental challenges we face today require us to look critically at how we might transform our economies to reduce pollution, use less land, and regrow natural spaces. As a result green jobs are increasingly the centre of economic development conversations. Community economic development (CED) is a strategy that can be used to help ensure that the benefits of a green economy are shared with those that are so often left out of the mainstream economy.

This webinar features two organizations that have taken a CED approach to finding green solutions for affordable housing while also developing local leadership and employment opportunities. Building Urban Industries for Local Development (BUILD) is a social enterprise in Winnipeg providing trades-based training for people with limited formal labour market experience. Work that trainees undertake includes retrofitting homes with insulation and high-efficiency toilets as well as water-and-energy-saving devices. People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH Buffalo) is a local membership-based community organization fighting to make affordable housing a reality on Buffalo’s West Side. PUSH Buffalo has been active in reclaiming empty homes for redevelopment as low-income housing and in the process is helping to develop community leaders to maintain local control of the redevelopments.

SPEAKERS

Aaron Bartley, Executive Director and co-founder of PUSH Buffalo

Aaron is a Buffalo native and proud product of the Buffalo Public School System. Over the years, Aaron has organized labor and student campaigns for economic justice, including the Harvard Living Wage Campaign and the Boston Justice for Janitors Strike in 2002. Aaron is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and has appeared in major media outlets as an advocate for low-income individuals.

Sean Hogan, Production Manager with BUILD

Sean Hogan is the Production Manager at BUILD, an award winning social enterprise and training program in Winnipeg’s North End. Since 2014, he has been leading the social enterprise teams of BUILD, helping navigate the choppy waters of professional contracting, as well as looking for new ways to create training and employment opportunities for individuals with multiple employment barriers. He is also a husband, father, and children’s entertainer.

HOST

Michael Lewis, Executive Director of the Canadian Center for Community Renewal (CCCR)

Mike is well known in Canada and internationally as a practitioner, author, educator, and leader in the field of CED and the social economy. His experience cuts across the full range of functions connected to community renewal and development. He has built and advised a wide range of businesses, organizations and governments all over Canada and internationally as well. Mike is an innovator, activist and thinker with a penchant for linking practice with policy and the micro and macro. He also co-authored The Resilience Imperative with Pat Conaty, which explores how we might forge a steady-state economy that is socially, ecologically and economically sensible and sustainable.