Work is changing: 50% of people in BC now have to find their own way in the gig economy.

Traditional education is not providing the answers. Groundswell is an alternative business school with a focus on supporting social impact businesses. Taking the Build Program* at Groundswell is not only about developing the hard skills needed to run a business. Social entrepreneurs also need emotional resilience and community, and that is where our team of mentors comes in.

Register for Meet the Mentors | Groundswell Potluck Social

Join them Oct 24 to Meet the Mentors, each of whom is a successful entrepreneur. (Also they are funny and insightful and kind people too, just saying.) Featuring:

Gilad Babchuk

Co-Founder of Groundswell with over 25 years experience establishing, developing and running various progressive businesses and organizations, Gilad has founded numerous alternative schools, social enterprises and NGOs.

Jim Barker

Another Groundswell Co-Founder, Jim is a serial entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience and an international portfolio and that includes employment training and recruitment, travel management, bars, restaurants and computer software/financial services.

Madeleine Shaw

Madeleine, the co-founder of Lunapads and founder of Nestworks, brings over 25 years of experience as a social entrepreneur interested in product development, progressive business practices and reimagining work-life balance.

Lenard Reid,

Co-founder of North Vancouver business Jackets for Jasper, whose profits go towards funding girls to attend school for a month in Nepal. Last year, the company funded the lifetime education of 7 girls!

Moderated by Build Instructor Emily Chow!

Stay afterwards for a potluck social and meet the community!

10am to 11am Pacific Time

In the last of five webinars by the Asian American Solidarity Economies Project, speakers will share cooperative planning and startup experiences as nonprofit organizations with an organizing focus.

Register for Incubating Cooperatives

Speakers:

Lan Dinh, VietLead

Lolita Andrada Lledo, Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California

Facilitators:

Yvonne Yen Liu, Solidarity Research Center 
Yvonne is the co-founder and research director of Solidarity Research Center, a worker self-directed nonprofit that advances solidarity economies. She serves on the board of the US Solidarity Economy Network and was named the 2018 Activist-in-Residence Fellow at the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. 

Parag Rajendra Khandhar, Asian American Solidarity Economies Project 
Parag is a founding principal of Gilmore Khandhar, LLC, a law firm focused on legal, policy, and advocacy tools to advance economic justice, racial equity, and social transformation. He teaches at George Washington University Law School. Parag co-founded Baltimore Activating Solidarity Economies (BASE) and the Asian American Solidarity Economies Network (AASE).

Asian American Solidarity Economies is a project of Solidarity Research Center in partnership with UCLA Asian American Studies Center and National CAPACD. For more information about our five-part webinar series, see our website.

Today’s impact-driven organizations are not only working to solve an even greater number of social issues, but we are also facing a generational shift. With our constantly evolving communities, innovation has become the solution to unleashing unprecedented change in how non-profits, governments and businesses respond to community, environmental and social needs.

REALIZE CHANGE: LEADERSHIP IN AN AGE OF DISRUPTION will explore how leaders of the impact sector can build workplaces that foster innovative solutions to cataclysmic change and support future leaders in the sector. This conference will take participants on an interactive, immersive journey with thought leaders from across Canada.

Register for Realize Change: Leadership in an Age of Disruption

Join us for our Conference Welcome and Opening Reception at the Vancity Theatre on November 21st at 6pm. The evening will feature a screening of The Social Shift, a documentary about social entrepreneurs using their businesses to make a positive impact in communities across Canada, followed by a panel discussion. Then fill your plates and glasses with snacks and beverages as we cap the evening off with a casual and fun networking reception. We'll see you bright and early the next day for the conference!

Realize Change: Leadership in an Age of Disruption is the conference for:

• Non-profit, social enterprise leaders, co-ops and mutuals, and B Corporations
• Government policy makers
• Academics and thought leaders
• Anyone interested in driving social change through innovation

1pm to 2pm Eastern Time

In the fourth of five webinars by the Asian American Solidarity Economies project, our speakers will discuss legacy business conversions into cooperatives and how existing micro-business can work together in cooperative ways.

Register for the Legacy Conversions and Micro Businesses webinar

Speakers:

Shevanthi (Shev) Daniel-Rabkin (Democracy at Work Institute) is passionate about the intersection of sustainable business and economic development. Her work spans over fifteen years in community and labor organizing, and strategic capacity building with nonprofit and small businesses. She previously served as Lead Manager of Worker Cooperative Initiative at Pinchot University – Center for Inclusive Entrepreneurship, and also helped develop a Cooperative Management Certificate program at Pinchot University. Shevanthi has managed and implemented large-scale labor organizing and worker justice campaigns with SEIU1199 NW, and programs centered on civil rights and social justice leadership, in rural and urban centers across the country, as well as solidarity work in South Africa, Nicaragua and Ethiopia. Shevanthi is also a co-founder of the O’Dell Education Center, a nonviolence direct action and leadership academy in Washington State, owned and operated by the Institute for Community Leadership. She is also Executive Board member at the Center for Women in Democracy, strengthening women’s capacity and leadership in public and private sector. Shevanthi has an MBA in Sustainable Business from Pinchot University and BA in History and Anthropology from University of Washington.

Soyun Park (Micro Business Network) is an organizer, a trainer, an organization builder and a movement strategist. She has over 25 years of experience with youth and community organizing in Black and Brown communities to affect local, state, and national policy change on racial and economic justice issues and immigrant rights issues.Over the last few years, Soyun has been focused on community economic development, working with owner operator micro businesses fighting predatory development in DC. A natural ally of neighborhood residents and workers, she has mobilized micro business owners in support of progressive worker policies, against public utility rate increases, and to push the largest electric holding company in the US to provide sustainable alternatives. She is also working in Baltimore with Korean owned liquor storeowners and the surrounding Black communities to identify solutions to city policies that perpetuate anti-Blackness and racial triangulation. She grew up in this country as the daughter of an immigrant shop owner and brings this experience into her political and organizing work to make an impact. She lives East of the River in DC with her two beautiful children.

Facilitators:

Yvonne Yen Liu (Solidarity Research Center) is the co-founder and research director of Solidarity Research Center, a worker self-directed nonprofit that advances solidarity economies. She serves on the board of the US Solidarity Economy Network and was named the 2018 Activist-in-Residence Fellow at the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.

Parag Rajendra Khandhar (Asian American Solidarity Economies Project) Parag is a founding principal of Gilmore Khandhar, LLC, a law firm focused on legal, policy, and advocacy tools to advance economic justice, racial equity, and social transformation. He teaches at George Washington University Law School. Parag co-founded Baltimore Activating Solidarity Economies (BASE) and the Asian American Solidarity Economies Network (AASE).

Asian American Solidarity Economies Webinar Series is a project of Solidarity Research Center in partnership with UCLA Asian American Studies Center and National CAPACD.