3pm Eastern Time | Noon Pacific Time

Local economy leaders across the country are recognizing that in order to achieve our vision, we will need to rewrite the policies that shape our economy — policies that today often work against local, values-based businesses.  Many BALLE fellows and local economy leaders are already taking action, rewriting the rules in their own places to reorient the banking system, implement mission-based procurement policies, advocate smart land-use planning, and more.

Join BALLE for a preview of a new policy platform crafted by the Institute for Local Self Reliance in partnership with Localist leaders and BALLE Fellows. Stacy Mitchell of ILSR, Rebecca Melançon of the Austin Independent Business Alliance and Local First Policy Committee, and Eric Griego, BALLE Fellow and former New Mexico State Senator, will share the new policy platform along with tips for how to use this and other tools to elevate the public conversation in your own place.

In this webinar you’ll learn:

• The core issues leaders are tackling across the country
• How to set policy priorities and actions to achieve them
• Shared resources for moving Localist policy forward.

Register for Transforming Policy to Build Strong Local Economies

Speakers:

Stacy Mitchell, Institute for Local Self Reliance

Stacy is co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and directs its Community-Scaled Economy Initiative, which produces research and analysis and partners with a range of allies to design and implement policies that curb economic consolidation and strengthen community-rooted enterprise. Much of Stacy’s work has focused on two pivotal sectors of the economy: retail and banking.  Among the first to raise the alarm about the rise of mega-retailers in the 1990s, Stacy is a nationally recognized leader in the movement to counter their power.

Rebecca Melançon, Austin Independent Business Alliance & Local First Policy Committee

Rebecca was a founding member of the nonprofit Austin Independent Business Alliance (AIBA) and served as vice president from 2002 until 2009 when she joined the staff of AIBA as Executive Director in March 2010. As an advocate for local business, she has served on Austin’s Comprehensive Plan Task Force, the Travis County Economic Development Subcommittee and hosts the Local Business Conference in Austin. Rebecca is a member of the Local First Policy Committee that worked with ISLR to craft the policy platform previewed in this webinar.

Moderator: Eric Griego, Fast Forward Consulting, former NM State Senator

Eric puts his two decades of experience in economic development and public office toward collaborating with local governments, foundations and community leaders to redevelop key parts of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and to create jobs and grow local businesses in some the state’s hardest hit communities. His Doctoral research and consulting work focuses on redefining community health to include economic resiliency, vibrancy and diversity. Eric served as an Albuquerque City Councilman, Assistant Cabinet Secretary for Economic Development, and a State Senator for four years.

Across Canada and around the world, people are rising up to shape new economies.  Recognizing that the ecological, social and even financial costs of our current economic system are unsustainable, innovative leaders are finding different paths forward.

As part of the third annual New Economy Week, this session will challenge us to explore how we can scale promising social innovations towards larger systemic change. 

The contributors will share big ideas and concrete examples of real solutions to further explore perspectives that they and others shared in Voices of New Economies, a report produced as part of Cities for People by One Earth and the Canadian CED Network.

The session offers inspiration for new possibilities that can bring us closer to a just, sustainable, and democratic society.

SPEAKERS

Hosted by Dagmar Timmer, Managing Director and Co-Founder of One Earth, the session will begin with an introduction by Michael Toye, Executive Director of the Canadian CED Network and Vanessa Timmer, Executive Director and Co-Founder of One Earth. It features insights from the following Voices contributors:

• Marianne Jurzyniec, Governance Liaison Manager, Affinity Credit Union

"We know youth are our future therefore investments to educate, mentor, and most importantly to ensure they are contributing to the decisions of today are invaluable.”

• Sean Geobey, Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo's School of Environment, Enterprise and Development

"Wealth comes from our capacity to invest materially, socially, and intellectually in the creation of institutions and infrastructure that support collective efforts to try and make the world a better place.”

• Lis Suarez Visbal-Ensink, Executive Director, FEM International and Co-Director, ETHIK BGC

"The capacity to choose what is best for you and yours and embrace it, not to take what you can because it is your only option, or the only thing you can afford.”

• Pallavi Roy, Researcher, Centre for Urban Energy, Ryerson University

"The energy sector, which has traditionally been highly controlled, has immense potential to be revolutionized through new economic practices.”

• Victoria Wee, Computer Science student, Stanford University

"Young people are the ingredient x to really carving out the future that we want.”

• Nabeel Ahmed, Network Co-ordinator, Social Enterprise Toronto

"At the core, new economies have to be focused around people and protecting public interests, not falling prey to short- term, profit-driven private interests." 

• Alexa Pitoulis, Managing Director, OpenMedia

"How we interact with media has changed dramatically in the last 20 years.  Local ownership and control over Internet infrastructure is a key component to thriving new economies of the future."

WATCH THE RECORDING!

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• Voices of New Economies, a compilation of perspectives on advancing more sustainable, just, democratic and inclusive economies prepared by Cities for People, OneEarth and the Canadian CED Network, with support from the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation
• New Economy Week
• New Economy Coalition

3:00pm to 4:00pm PST

Co-ops 101 is the BC Co-operative Association's (BCCA) introduction to co-operatives and the co-op movement. Designed to be relevant and interesting everyone from new co-operators, employees at co-ops and credit unions, or anyone interested in the co-op movement, it's an excellent way to learn more about co-ops.

Start Co-operating

Are you interested in starting a co-operative? Do you work for a co-op or a credit union and want to learn more about the co-op sector? Does the idea of co-operation interest you?

That's why we're here. Come and learn all about the co-op sector, co-operatives, how and why to start one, and how the BCCA can help you as you think of ways to build a co-operative economy.

Register for Co-ops 101

Learn About Co-op Business Basics

Learn about the history of co-ops, different kinds of co-ops ranging from consumer co-ops to worker co-ops to nonprofit co-ops at this workshop.

Participants will also explore how to take their idea towards the development of a co-op, including:

• The co-op development path
• Assessing a business idea
• Feasibility and business planning
• The nuts and bolts of starting a co-op
• Support and assistance from the BCCA and the co-op sector

Access Co-op Development Support.

If you are representing a group that is exploring co-operation as a business idea, taking a Co-ops 101 course allows your group to register with the BCCA as an "Emerging Co-op" and access ongoing BCCA support, including access to co-op development experts, ongoing advice, discounted training and education, and more. 

Attend Via Interactive Webinar

BCCA workshops are offered via online interactive webinar. You can attend from the comfort of your home, your office, or your iPad anywhere in the world. 

SOURCE: BC Co-operative Association

1:30pm - 3:00pm Pacific Time

If your group files an annual report with Victoria as a ‘BC Society’, then it must actively migrate to the new legislation. The new BC Societies Act requires organizations to comply within a specified timeframe.

This fall, the BC Ministry of Finance will release the regulations that will accompany the new legislation.

Within these regulations will be a ‘coming into force date’. The Ministry’s most recent estimate is that this date will likely be in the fall of 2016. BC’s 27,000 affected organizations will be required to actively migrate to the new Act within two years of this date, with most elements of the new Act applying on the coming into force date.

Join Stacey Corriveau, Executive Director of the BC Centre for Social Enterprise; and Richard Bridge, charity and non-profit lawyer with decades of experience, for an informative 90-minute webinar that will outline how the new BC Societies Act will affect you and how to prepare. 

The BC Societies Act webinar will:

• review highlights of the new Act
• help you identify the specific areas that affect your organization
• equip your leadership with the knowledge and skills needed to efficiently and confidently move your organization through this process
• provide informational handouts and a transition checklist to help keep you organized

Register for the BC Societies Act webinar

SOURCE: BC Centre for Social Enterprise