Want to build community?

Tired of the commercialization of the holidays?

Organize an Alternative Gift Fair in your town! Join this webinar to learn how.

Date: Thursday, November 7, 2013
Time: 1:00-2:00pm EST (10:00-11:00am PST)
Cost: Free

Alternative Gift Fairs are a way to promote the gift-giving tradition of the holiday season without the wastefulness and commercialization of conventional shopping.

Alternative gifts prioritize meaning over materials — they may include charitable donations, gently used secondhand items, help for a community project, and more. Whether for a few dozen or a few hundred people, Alternative Gift Fairs are a fun and inspiring way to celebrate the holidays.

Join New Dream on November 7, 2013 for a free webinar about how to organize an Alternative Gift Fair in your community. Dovetailing with New Dream's Guide to Holding An Alternative Gift Fair, the webinar will cover topics such as how to get started, obtaining funding and participants, and advice on how to publicize your event.

Get inspired and hear directly from the organizers of successful and established Alternative Gift Fairs. Register now!

[ REGISTER HERE ]

Guest Speakers:

Jeff Golden has spent the last 25 years in politics, broadcasting and editorial journalism, and organizational consulting. He is the founder and organizer behind the Abundance Swap in Ashland, OR, which is in its 12th year. The Abundance Swap is a community gathering where participants trade secondhand, useful items as an alternative to holiday shopping. Last year's event attracted over 400 people.

Jim Groves has worked at the National Education Association as a Senior Benefits Specialist for 13 years. For the past five years, he has run the NEA Alternative Gift Fair in Washington, DC — an event where shoppers have the opportunity to support charities in honor of family members and friends in lieu of consumer gifts during the holidays. Last year the NEA Alternative Gift Fair raised nearly $3,000 for charitable organizations.
 

Lunch & Learn Webinar Series:

Learn the essential steps to becoming an Entrepreneur.

If you're going into entrepreneurship and still holding on to the belief that it's the same as being employed (except without benefits and job "security") - you will find yourself in a very limiting position. When you have your own business you will have to develop traits to successfully transition from employee to CEO.

Here's what you'll take away from this webinar:

• Why your "story" about what's possible for you can stop you from having a profitable business - and how to clear out beliefs that stand in your way
• Why the employee to entrepreneur transition has challenges that won't be found in a business plan - and how to head them off by trusting your inner voice
• Why failure is an option - and how to use it to build a stronger business
• Why old fears can stop you from making decisions - and how to make fear your ally
• Why entrepreneurship is more about "being" and less about "doing" - and how you can become the entrepreneur you want to be.

[ REGISTER NOW ]

Webinar Format:

12:00 - 12:45 pm | Welcome/Presentation
12:45 - 01:00 pm | Question Period/ Wrap-up

Webinar participation is FREE, but registration is required.

Guest Speaker:

Byron Biggs
Chief Executive Officer
Mayday Global Solutions
Information Technology and Services

Byron's 14 years of experience in the Information Technology industry has led Byron to conduct successful business activities in Canada, United States, Mexico, Panama, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Austria, Switzerland and Russia. His career began as a marketing specialist in an e-learning firm followed by a nomination to become the International Marketing Director and to develop a new market in Latin America, generating unprecedented revenues. Byron was also successful in promoting elearning courses in 6 different languages, around 166 different countries, using Internet Marketing strategies and Change Management tactics

For more information:

Mary Sicoli, Webinar Coordinator
CEDEC
(514) 903-3753 (est. 221)
mary.sicoli@cedec.ca

 

The CEDEC Small Business Support Network is an initiative of the Community Economic Development and Employability Corporation (CEDEC).

Check out this exclusive discussion brought to you by Emerging Leaders, The Canadian CED Network's standing youth committee.

You hardly need to do a quick web search to understand that real and imposing challenges exist for youth wanting to break into the Canadian job market. In some cases you may be told you don’t have enough experience despite years of educational training. In other cases you might be told that you are over-educated for the position. In many cases you may find there just aren’t jobs available in your field of study or practice, despite being told that if you ‘follow your passion’ things would work out. Whatever the reason, many youth, along with other marginalized segments of our population, are being left out of the Canadian economy.

BACKGROUND

In this age of growing concern for social and environmental conditions, youth are increasingly looking for purpose driven employment opportunities in the hopes of developing mission-related careers. Canada’s employment statistics also reveal an aging workforce, much of which is nearing retirement. Employers understand that youth engagement is essential for creating substantive and lasting change and is integral to organizational succession planning for. All of this seems to bode well for youth participation in the Social Economy of Canada. But many organizations have limited hiring power and, in some cases limited experience in effective youth engagement, and so are struggling to provide the work experience and longer-term employment opportunities needed to attract a new generation of workers to the Social Economy.

This session introduces some examples of how youth can take charge of their own careers within the Social Economy, both by creating your own initiatives and by finding ways to integrate yourself into existing programs and projects.

PRESENTERS

• Sandra Badcock is Housing & Tenant Relations Specialist with Stella’s Circle, a social services agency in St. John's, Newfoundland providing programs for adults who have faced challenge in the community, including personal or family breakdown, homelessness, mental health issues, addictions, abuse, illiteracy and the lack of education as well as poverty. Sandi entered the world of CED as a CreateAction intern in 2010 and has never turned back. Working for various organizations for youth, including FINALY!, Service Canada Centre for Youth, and Student Affairs and Services, Sandi has been active in youth advocacy, issues, and engagement. She is the current chair of Emerging Leaders.
   
• Stefan Epp-Koop is Program Director of Food Matters Manitoba. Previously, Stefan has coordinated research, evaluation, and policy analysis at Food Matters and was also Project Coordinator for the Manitoba Alternative Food Research Alliance.  Stefan holds an MA in History from Queen's University.  Stefan became interested in food for many reasons – growing up in rural Alberta, involvement in international development work, and an interest in policy issues, to name a few, not to mention the joy of getting his hands in the garden dirt.
   
• Marianne Jurzyniec is currently employed with Affinity Credit Union as a Community Development Manager in Saskatoon Saskatchewan. In 2011 she joined Emerging Leaders and has enjoyed the experience of meeting other people who share the same goals and interests as she does including her passion for co-operatives, the environment, and her community. Her current role in Community Development allows her to feed these passions by working with micro-enterprise, co-op development, financial literacy, affordable housing, social enterprise, and environmental initiatives.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• CCEDNet’s webpage with many more youth resources
• DreamNow
• Canadian Youth Business Foundation
• The Students Commission

Speakers

Living Wage Employers:
Alex Johnstone, HWDSB &
Catherine Ludgate, Vancity

via Conference Call
November 7, 2013

Paying a Living Wage makes good business sense! In this tele-learning we will hear from two of Canada's leading living wage employers, Catherine Ludgate is the Manager of Community Investment for Vancity Credit Union and Alex Johnstone who is a trustee with the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board.

Vancity Credit Union has more than 2500 employees with 57 branches which makes them one of the largest living wage employers in Canada. They have also ensured that many of their external contracts are also paying the living wage for their employees. For more on Vancity as a living wage employer, click here.

In March of this year the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board adopted the living wage for it's over 7000 employees. It is the second, but largest, public school board in Canada to do so. Read more.

During this tele-learning we will hear about what it takes to become a living wage employer and why it makes good business sense to do so! We will also touch on what a living wage is and highlight the living wage movement in Canada. This tele-learning is part of Canada's inaugural Living Wage Week!

There will be opportunity for questions and answers during the call and a podcast will be made available to all registered participants following the conversation.

[ more info & registration ]

CUMA and CUMO Cooperative Services
(Cooperative use of agricultural equipment and Cooperative use of agricultural labor)

Tuesday, October 29, 2013
12:00 - 1:00 p.m. Eastern time
Cost:  FREE

The CUMA cooperative is a service that provides its members the means necessary to their operations. It thus provides an opportunity for its members to use farm equipment at the lowest possible price, meeting the needs of each. A cooperative use of agricultural equipment (CUMA) is a group of farmers established under the Law on Cooperatives. The first mission of a CUMA is to enable its members to use farm equipment at the lowest possible cost and the needs of each member. The CUMA is a great way to reduce the capitalization in machinery and equipment, thus reducing production costs. It also allows the use of more efficient machines and free up capital that can be directed towards productive investment.

The CUMO cooperative is the equivalent of the CUMA, but where we share a resource workforce. The CUMO model offers producers a reliable source of skilled agricultural labor at an affordable cost. For employees, this allows them to be employed full-time, to enjoy better working conditions and enjoy a variety of experiences. The CUMO assigns a full-time employee to fill the partial needs of labor by an average of eight producers.

This webinar will explain some of the features and consolidated benefits of these cooperatives.

Guest Speaker:

Carrolyn O'Grady agr.
Advisor, Agri-Environment and Regional Development
Regional Directorate of Montérégie West
The Quebec Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food

Ms. O'Grady has extensive experience in project management and territory mobilization planning. She is a general agronomist and has worked in several areas including agricultural livestock production and regional development. She also worked with the community on projects of agricultural cooperatives and is working to promote the adoption of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques among farmers. She has worked with the Montérégie West directorate of The Quebec Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPAQ) since August 2012.

Registration:

Webinar participation is FREE, but registration is required.

Once registered, you will receive the access instructions for webinar participation.

[ REGISTER HERE ]

[ MORE INFO ]

The Measuring the Co-operative Difference Research Network is pleased to offer this free public webinar:

This webinar will open the dialogue on ethnocultural co-operatives (specifically reflecting on examples across Canada and the US) and the place of these co-ops in the larger society. The two featured speakers are both undertaking research as part of the Measuring the Co-operative Difference Research Network: Jo-Anne Lee of the University of Victoria and Jessica Gordon-Nembhard of John Jay College, affiliated with the City University of New York.

[ REGISTER HERE ]

Jessica Gordon-Nembhard will begin the webinar by providing a description of co-ops emerging in African American contexts in the US. Through her discussion of the history and examples, participants will better understand how co-operatives emerged in response to the social context, race relations and people living on the margins.

Jo-Anne Lee will examine how researchers have written about cooperatives and the absences in our understandings of co-operatives in Canadian society using the Japanese Fishing Cooperatives on the West Coast as a case study.  Co-operatives play many different roles in nation formation.  As social entities, co-operatives are bound to reflect existing power relations in the larger society including those of race, gender, class and colonialism. In addition, Jo-Anne will explore a couple of key questions:

How can we understand the relative absence of knowledge about "ethnic" cooperatives?
How has this lacunae affected our knowledge and understanding of cooperatives?
She will engage participants in a conversation that shifts from normative and descriptive discussions to critical thinking and reconceptualizing the role of cooperatives in larger social, cultural, political and economic contexts.

>> Speaker bios available here