Since 1995, United We Can has been operating self sustaining urban enterprises to create community, income, and job training for people in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. As their extremely well chosen motto states, United We Can is a street charity that means business. I say this about their motto because the number of social enterprises they successfully operate is truly inspiring. And just as importantly, their business ventures have created hundreds of jobs for Vancouver’s inner city residents, while making a significant environmental impact through their various recycling programs.

Some of United We Can’s business ventures include:

• United We Can Bottle Depot: beverage container recycling centre built by and for binners (people who make a living collecting recyclable containers)
• Commercial Recycling Collection Service: customized container collection service
• Urban Binning Units: environmentally friendly, non-motorized carts used to collect beverage containers
• BikeWorks: bicycle and cart shop that provides service, sales, repairs and education
• BinTek: recycled computer equipment is rebuilt and affordably sold to low income residents
• Happy Plants: abandoned plants are rescued and sold at reasonable prices to the community

Operating one social enterprise is a daunting task for any non-profit organization. Being able to manage several business ventures, and for over 15 years, is a feat worth celebrating! I can’t be sure what they had in mind when selecting such a name, but United We Can has most definitely become a self-fulfilling prophesy of the best kind.

To find out more about United We Can, check out their website at http://www.unitedwecan.ca and follow them on Twitter at @unitedwecan.

If you have a favourite Canadian social enterprise that you want to share with us, we would love to hear from you in the comments section!

Last week, at the Advancing Social Enterprise event hosted by The Calgary Foundation and SVP Calgary, I got quite a few questions about Trico Foundation funding.  Clarity around our funding is in the eye of the beholder.  While we’ve attempted to articulate it on our website, we also understand its not quite perfect yet.  I thought I’d take another stab at it here – in a bit more informal way.

On Twitter, there’s a phenomenon called Follow Friday that allows people to recommend their favourite tweeters to all of their followers. Follow Friday is a great way to spread the word about people and/or groups in a realm where it can sometimes be difficult to figure out who is worth following.

Considering you’re reading a blog post right now, you’re probably wondering why I’m talking about Twitter. Well, the Trico Charitable Foundation bloggers were thinking it might be interesting to start our own version of Follow Friday so we can introduce our readers to some of Canada’s innovative and creative social enterprises. This allows us to give you some more insight into this exciting aspect of the non-profit sector, and also provides us with another way to support Canadian social enterprises. It’s a win-win situation!

 
Okay, enough with the preambles. For this week’s Follow Friday, we would like to introduce you to Soup Bee, which is a social enterprise supported by the West Broadway Development Corporation. If you live in Winnipeg, you’ve probably already heard about, if not tried, one of the many soups that Soup Bee produces every week from locally-sourced ingredients.

In addition to tasting great, these soups are doing good too. This is because the profits they generate help support the Soup Bee’s goals of providing supportive employment opportunities in Winnipeg’s downtown core, promoting food security and local producers, all the while leaving a small carbon footprint. Who knew a batch of soup could do so much?!

To find out more about Soup Bee, check out their website at http://soupbee.ca/ and follow them on Twitter at @theSoupBee

Ps. If you have a favourite Canadian social enterprise that you want to share with us, we would love to hear from you in the comments section!