Membertou Trade and Convention Centre
Cape Breton, NS

The Community Sector Council of Nova Scotia, along with numerous partners, will be hosting a 250-delegate conference bringing together the business, community, education, and government sectors at the Membertou Trade and Convention Centre on October 3-4, 2017. This conference, “Many Hands, Many Voices: Working Together for Stronger Communities,” will be at once a celebration of cross-sectoral collaboration, a skill-building and learning event, and an opportunity to develop projects and collaborations in an action focused manner. The conference aims to build cross-sectoral capacity to collaborate and build stronger communities for collective action.

Register for Many Hands Many Voices

It will build skills and capacity in the areas of economic development, engagement, entrepreneurship, social enterprise, policy and legislation, inclusion and diversity, building trust and working with different perspectives, turning conflict into opportunity, and building trust. The conference will create opportunities for collaborations to flourish. It will culminate in a shared vision of the legacy we want for the future of Nova Scotia.

A defining feature of the conference is the power of story – the stories we tell, and those we don’t tell. This event will showcase the collaborations that have made a difference in Nova Scotia’s development.

1:00 - 2:00pm Eastern Time

This webinar will share developmental stages, challenges and key learnings of establishing a province wide initiative within a pan Canadian collective impact effort to end youth homelessness.  A Way Home – a national collaborative for youth homelessness was one of the Ontario Trillium Foundation's first collective impact grantees and they will share their experience using a collective impact approach.

Register for the Collective Impact Stream Action Area: Prosperous People webinar

Facilitator

Tracey Robertson
After spending the last 25 years in strategic philanthropy, community development, higher education and the voluntary sector, Tracey has learned that the most innovative solutions are developed when people from diverse perspectives and disciplines come together to look at an issue in a new light. Over the last 10 years, Tracey has focused her work on investing and fueling social innovation at the grassroots, community and systemic levels.

Guests

Melanie Redman
Prior to becoming the Executive Director of A Way Home, Melanie was the Director of National Initiatives at Eva’s. In that role she directed the National Learning Community on Youth Homelessness, the Eva’s Awards for Ending Youth Homelessness, and the Mobilizing Local Capacity to End Youth Homelessness Program, which works with communities across Canada to craft, implement, and sustain plans to end youth homelessness. She currently serves as the Chair of the Youth Homelessness Research Priority Area at the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness. Her passion for addressing the root causes of complex social issues drew her to co-develop A Way Home with partners across Canada.

Dr. Stephen Gaetz
Dr. Gaetz is a leading international researcher on homelessness, and is director of the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness at York University.  He focuses his efforts on conducting research and mobilizing this knowledge so as to have a greater impact on solutions to homelessness. Stephen has played a leading international role in knowledge dissemination in the area of homelessness through the Homeless Hub.

11:00am – 12:00pm Pacific Time

Over the past decade alone, web technology has vastly increased data availability, and community innovators have created new tools for accessing, visualizing, analyzing, and sharing relevant data to advance equity-focused policies and investments. From local tools like the Metro Atlanta Equity Atlas, which connects local leaders to timely data across eight key areas of community well-being, to national tools like Mapping Police Violence, which provides interactive maps and charts on officer-involved deaths of community members, online data tools are equipping advocates, policymakers, funders, and the public with relevant data to advance health equity and move policy across a range of issue areas.

Register for Designing Data Tools for Health Equity and Community Action

Join us, live from Portland, for a panel discussion with national leaders who are using and designing data tools to drive health equity and community action.

Featured Speakers:

• Sarah Treuhaft, Senior Director at PolicyLink (moderator)
• Nathaniel Smith, Founder and Chief Equity Officer/CEO of the Partnership for Southern Equity
• Sam Sinyangwe, Co-Founder of Campaign Zero and Mapping Police Violence
• Julia Sebastian, Research Associate at Race Forward
• Cat Goughnour, Founder and Principal at Radix Consulting and Right 2 Root
• Antwi Akom, CEO of Streetwyze; Co-Founder of ISEEED; Associate Professor at San Francisco State University

This convening is generously supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

12:00pm - 1:30pm Eastern Time

Financial well-being isn’t just about accessing the right information, but understanding how our financial decisions can be influenced by other cognitive processes.

Register for the Insights to Impact webinar

In this webinar, researchers Katy Davis and Emily Zimmerman from Ideas42 will share details about what behavioural science is, the key insights it has generated, and explore behavioural “nudges” and other interventions that can be used to strengthen financial empowerment programs and services.

​12:00pm Eastern Time

Social purchasing is becoming a key part of the social enterprise ecosystem. Learn more about a new report published by the Carleton Centre for Community Innovation, "Social Value Procurement Measurement and Evaluation" in an upcoming webinar on Social Value Purchasing and SVP Measurement.

Register for the webinar by emailing genevieve.harrison at carleton.ca

Speakers

Tessa Hebb, Carleton Centre for Community Innovation (3ci)

David King, Social Impact Advisor, Housing Association Charitable Trust (HACT), UK, noted expert in wellbeing valuation.

Most public contracting authorities agree with the benefits of integrating social value considerations into their procurement processes to generate positive social, economic and environmental impacts for communities. However, few contracting authorities engage in measuring and evaluating the outcomes and impacts of their SVP policies and programs.

This research by Dr. Tessa Hebb and Dr. Heather Hachigian finds that barriers to measuring and evaluating SVP relate to two themes: resource challenges and interpretation challenges.

Read the Social Value Procurement Measurement and Evaluation report

1pm Eastern

This webinar is targeted for impact investors and others who want to better understand investment options for targeting impact capital to worker coops. We will provide background about worker cooperatives and the opportunity in worker coop conversions, review worker coop investment structures, and delve into investment options ranging from direct investing, loan and equity fund investing and investment crowdfunding.

Register for the Impact Investing in Worker Cooperatives webinar

Presenters

Blake Jones, Co-founder, Namasté Solar
Christina Jennings, Executive Director, Shared Capital
Matt Glatting, Treasurer, Capital Impact Partners
Annie McShiras, Investment Associate, Self-Help Federal Credit Union
Alison Lingane, Co-founder, Project Equity