Good Jobs + Good Business = Better Community

On March 23, 2017 the Victoria City Council adopted the "Good Jobs + Good Business = Better Community" Action Plan developed by the Mayor’s Task Force on Social Enterprise and Social Procurement. The adoption comes with the amendment that the plan include "recent immigrants" as a strategic group of focus.

Using an ecosystem-based approach to community economic development, the action plan focuses to a large degree on efforts to get the unemployed, underemployed and marginalized into employment. The plan identifies three sets of recommendations that will strengthen the City's procurement practices to maximize community benefit as well as support small business and social enterprise sectors.

The three recommendations include:

• Social Procurement: purchases should be leveraged to improve the economic, social and environmental well-being of the community
• Social Enterprise Development: strengthen and grow businesses already doing business with community benefit in mind and grow the social enterprise sector
• Leading Economic Change: make the mainstream economy more inclusive to ensure there is always an opportunity for everyone to prosper

Each recommendation has a set of actions and tasks to be implemented over the next five years to achieve prescribed outcomes. Leads and supports in the community to help achieve these outcomes are noted and include the City of Victoria, local organizations, agencies and business. Next steps will include City staff developing a Social Procurement Framework and work plan for Council's consideration.

Read the "Good Jobs + Good Business = Better Community" Action Plan 

About the Task Force

The Task Force on Social Enterprise and Social Procurement was a recommendation of the Mayor’s Task Force on Economic Development and Prosperity, which with input from the community, developed the City’s economic action plan, Making Victoria: Unleashing Potential in 2015. The economic action plan identifies six engines to drive economic prosperity, generate jobs and raise household incomes. One engine that encompasses the rest is entrepreneurship and social enterprise.

Source: The City of Victoria