• Saving all your pennies to attend an inspirational workshop in paradise?
• Want to go kayaking, get a massage, and eat gourmet food on your next trip?
• Convinced the best vacations involve airplanes, cars, floatplanes and ferries?

If you answered yes to any of these questions you need to check out Hollyhock, Canada’s leading centre for lifelong learning. Located on Cortes Island in British Columbia, Hollyhock is a non-profit organization offering year-round courses and holidays. With programs on everything from freelance writing to meditation, and mushrooms to non-profit leadership, there’s sure to be a course that’s right up your alley.

Hollyhock has been providing personal, professional, and social development to learners from all backgrounds for the past 29 years. The 100+ courses they offer are taught by revolutionary teachers and thinkers, all set against a backdrop described as a “refuge for your soul.” Some of the upcoming conferences our readers might be interested in include the Social Change Institute (June 8-12) and the Social Venture Institute (September 14-18). To see what else Hollyhock has to offer, be sure to check out their catalogue.

To find out more about Hollyhock, check out their website at www.hollyhock.ca and follow their updates on Twitter via @HollyhockLive.

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!

Social enterprise is a way of doing things; it is not an end goal in itself.

This is my favorite take-away from the May 5 Intro to Social Enterprise workshop.  We were excited to welcome 24 participants into our Trico Foundation space for the first Enterprising Non-Profits Alberta workshop.  It was wonderful to see the diversity of areas that our participants represented – disabilities, social justice, low-income, homelessness, youth, seniors, employment, philanthropy, and community investment.  It is this diversity that is a real testament to the broad impact that social enterprise (as a verb) can have in our community.

Bringing the necessary resources and education around good social enterprise development is timely for Alberta.  Our June workshop is already oversold, and we are working with a growing community of interested Calgarians to offer more informal ways to connect around social enterprise development and practice.  It is truly an exciting time, but we’re just scratching the surface.  From social purchasing, social finance, technology integration, storytelling, shared resources, mentorship – there are opportunities yet to be built.

We see it as the creation of a movement.  If you feel inspired, we hope you get involved – share your comments, join us on Twitter, email us.

I have a confession to make.  Or maybe two- this is my first foray into the world of blogging and second, I have been very busy since joining the Trico Charitable Foundation learning the overabundance of terms, concepts and ideas that swirl around the notion of social enterprise. My cork board is cluttered with visual representations to further my understanding of social enterprise.  I have included a few for your enjoyment.

Spectrum Social Enterprise

Categorization of Different 'SE' Organizational Models

As practitioners in this field we are being called upon to be more socially innovative, or as Al Etmanski writes, “we need to do more with more”.