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The Co-operative City Conference

 

November 23, 2012
9:00am - 5:00pm 
SFU Woodward’s
Vancouver, BC

About the Conference:

The City of Vancouver is engaged in an unprecedented effort to make sustainability the driving force that will define what the city aspires to and how the city operates. This vision has prompted the City to rise to the front rank of cities promoting sustainability and to declare that by the year 2020, Vancouver will be recognized as the world’s Greenest City. It is a bold and inspiring vision and one that rests, in large part, on the means by which the City engages its citizenry in realizing this ambitious goal

A key element in making this vision a reality is the adoption of social technologies that both embody and advance the social values and relationships that are implicit in the City’s sustainability goals. Co-operation is chief among these.
 
The purpose of the Co-operative City conference is to showcase the ways in which co-operatives can make sustainability the basis for strengthening key sectors and essential services and also for improving the quality of life for citizens.
 
The objective of the conference is to generate strategic partnerships between the co-op sector and the City to advance sustainability goals in such areas as:
  • Arts and culture
  • Local food systems
  • Affordable housing
  • Green industry
  • Community energy

In recognition of 2012 as the UN International Year of Co-operatives, the Co-operative City conference is a bold attempt to place co-operation at the heart of a city’s sustainability efforts. In addition to showcasing outstanding examples through the presentations and workshops, the conference will feature site visits with projects that exemplify what is possible through the strategic use of co-operative models. 

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Exploring the intersection of the economic and social elements of co-operation

 

This webinar explores where the economic and business aspects of co-operatives intersect with the social aspects of co-operatives. In exploring these concurrent bottom lines, the speakers will examine co-operatives in the context of the social economy as well as exploring how co-operatives use social accounting to critically examine their social impact as an enterprise. 
  • Dr. J.J. McMurtry of York University and editor of the book Living Economics: Perspectives on Canada's Social Economy, will define the social economy (unpacking how these two concepts can be defined together) and how co-operatives can be defined therein.
  • Dr. Laurie Mook of Arizona State University and co-author of the book What Counts: social accounting for nonprofits and cooperatives, will describe concepts of social and sustainability accounting and describe how co-operatives balance this type of measurement and performance evaluation in tandem with economic and business evaluation.
Participants in the webinar will be welcomed to share examples and comments from their own experiences.
 
Learn more about the Speaker:
Click here for speaker bios
 

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Creating the Future of Your Community

Hildy Gottlieb is co-founder of Creating the Future and author of The Pollyanna Principles: Reinventing "Nonprofit Organizations" to Create the Future of Our World. Her writing has been seen in dozens of publications throughout the community benefit sector, including the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where she hosts the monthly podcast, Making Change - interviewing change leaders from around the world. Join with Hildy as she talks about what it takes for the social sector to create a different future. In this podcast she will highlight her latest thinking and outline what it takes for organizations to think and act differently so that they can create change.

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