12:00pm - 2:00pm Eastern Time (9:00am - 11:00pm, Pacific Time)

Innoweave is pleased to partner with Accelerating Social Impact to offer a National Social Enterprise Feasibility Planning Workshop.

The workshop is designed to help leadership teams of 3-4 (including board members) start to explore a concrete opportunity or idea for creating a social enterprise by:

Assessing the market for their potential product or service Identifying potential customers Developing potential pricing structures
Identifying next steps to become launch-ready The Innoweave Social Enterprise workshop builds on the Innoweave Introduction to Social Enterprise webinar.

Register for the Social Enterprise Feasibility Planning Workshop

Teams may also view this pre-recorded webinar.

Event details:

When: Tuesday, November 17th and Thursday, November 19th, 2015
Participants are required to commit to both days (the workshop content will be spread over these two sessions).

Where: This distance workshop will be hosted via Cisco WebEx. A link to the meeting and workshop documents will be provided to successful applicants.

Deadline: Applications are due by Wednesday, October 28th, 2015. Space is limited. Successful applicants will be notified by Wednesday, November 4th, 2015.

Participating organizations will also be eligible to apply for implementation funding in January 2016 to engage a coach to help them with development following the workshop. To learn more about Innoweave Implementation Funding, click here.

If you have any questions, please contact us at info at innoweave.ca.

8:00am - 4:30pm Eastern Time

The Mental Health Commission of Canada presents a free, one-day, interactive forum on practical tools and resources and innovative practices that promote employment of people living with mental health problems or illnesses.

Like conventional businesses, social businesses exchange goods and services in the marketplace, but they are organized to achieve social as well as economic goals. In the mental health arena, this includes creating employment opportunities for the almost 90% of Canadians with mental health problems or illness who are unemployed.

People who work are healthier, have higher self-esteem and higher standards of living. For those affected by mental illness who want to work and contribute, one of the biggest barriers to entering the workforce is stigma.

Social businesses help reduce the stigma of mental illness by engaging people with lived experience in positive social exchanges with others, including co-workers, supervisors, employers, and customers.

Around 100 social businesses have been identified in Canada who are providing employment opportunities for people with mental health problems or illnesses.

If you would like the opportunity to share your experience or discuss the future of this field with like-minded experts, this forum is for you.

Register for Discovering Hidden Talent

This forum is for:

• Social businesses employing individuals with mental health problems or illnesses;
• Policy-makers;
• People with lived experience of mental illness employed by social businesses;
• Researchers;
• Mental health service providers;
• Key stakeholders and other community champions; and
• People interested in the field.

This event has been made possible through the generous contributions of the following sponsors: Government of Canada - Employment and Social Development Canada; Sheridan College; McConnell Foundation; Rise Asset Development; Toronto Enterprise Fund; Air Canada; RBC Foundation; Canadian HR Reporter; Great-West Life Centre for Mental Health in the Workplace; and 3M Canada.

For more information, contact: 
Nitika Rewari, Program Manager, Workplace Mental Health, at nrewari at mentalhealthcommission.ca

**Travel bursaries of up to $500 are also available and can be applied for within the registration process.

SOURCE: The Mental Health Commission of Canada

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

9:30AM - 4:30PM
The 519 (519 Church Street Toronto)

Learn from experts about how local communities and businesses can work together to revitalize local economies and provide opportunities for all. Presentations and workshops will show you how to:

• Create Walkable Communities and Vibrant Main Streets for All, Jennifer Keesmaat, Chief Planner City of Toronto
• Fill Empty Retail Spaces and Build Community with Pop-Up Shops
• Make Small Scale Enterprise a Transformative Force, Rafael Gomez, Prof UofT & Author, Small Business and the City
• Energize Main St with Pop-up Incubators, Pauline Larsen, Senior Economic Development Manager, Downtown Yonge BIA
• Be Innovative with Micro Retail, Kevin Hurley, Special Projects Manager, Centre for Social Innovation
• Follow these Steps to a Successful Main Street, (no matter its population, ethnic composition, location, income, or budget) - Michael D. Smith, Director of Real Estate, StreetSense creators of Vibrant Street Toolkit.
• Lots of opportunities to network!
• Bring your BIA/Neighbourhood Association to learn more!

Register for Building Vibrant Main Streets and the Power of Local

Lunchtime Meet and Greet Marketplace Talk to the innovators! Learn about alternative tenancies for small enterprise, business in the box (container conversions), micro markets, doing business in a park and much more. Lunch is included ~ pay what you can (donations gratefully accepted). 

About the organizers:

DECA/WoodGreen's successful Pop-up Shop program on Danforth East fills empty storefronts, gives entrepreneurs a great start, brings local shoppers out on the street and engages the community in the effort! The program has reduced the storefront vacancy rate to a healthy 9%, down from 17%.