"[Social enterprises] are economic ventures that are solving problems, and in our case in Canada, we believe the defining issue is connecting people who most need the work with the work that most needs to be done."

Longtime community economic development (CED) practitioner and social enterprise developer, Shaun Loney, was interviewed by Anna Maria Tremonti on CBC's The Current this Tuesday regarding his latest book An Army of Problem Solvers. Loney has co-founded and mentored 11 social enterprises including two organizational members of the Canadian CED Network, BUILD and Aki Energy.

About Aki Energy he says, "'Aki' is an Ojibwe word for Earth and we're doing geothermal on First Nations. But we've started several other social enterprises through it on many other First Nations in Manitoba. In fact, the two largest geothermal companies in all of Western Canada are social enterprises that we've started, they're employing people where there were no where there was no employment before."

As a former bureaucrat (Director of Energy Policy for the Government of Manitoba) he has some strong words about government involvement in both First Nations economic development and social enterprise.

Listen to the interview with Shaun Loney on CBC's The Current

For more from Shaun Loney on An Army of Problem Solvers, check out the recording from the webinar hosted by The Canadian CED Network on December 7th.