Having someone in your corner who can see where you want to go, the things that might be holding you back, and the challenges that have yet to come is so key in developing effective mental models and progressing you on your learning journey.
This journey update involves 2013 Social EnterPrize recipient JUMP Math, and our chat with Scott McMeekin, CEO of JUMP Math. JUMP Math’s mission is to help improve life outcomes for the students it reaches. To do so, it has developed an approach that builds math achievement, while promoting the social and emotional skills that are critical to academic and life success. JUMP Math provides teacher and student resources for Kindergarten to grade 8, and supporting teacher professional development. Although JUMP Math design criteria focus on the needs of students at risk of failure, its resources are used by some of Canada’s most elite private schools, highlighting the fact that all students benefit from excellent pedagogy. Resources are also available for parents to use with their children.
The Trico Charitable Foundation (TCF) is excited to announce a new role, and welcome its newest team member. Alexandra Daignault joins TCF as Liaison for Student Social Entrepreneurs. In that capacity she will work with post-secondary students that are developing a social enterprise, by providing coaching, workshops, and other materials developed by TCF. The position was created to support the growing number of student social enterprises in our city, and help Calgary take one more step to realizing its potential as a Canadian social enterprise hub.
Today, the Trico Foundation team is very excited to share that Aishwarya Khanduja will be joining us from May to August as we are truly inspired by her passion and vision for her venture. We look forward to working with Aishwarya as she develops her social enterprise and learning from her as she brings her venture through our A.S.E.S.S. process.
It has been a busy 18 months at the Trico Foundation as we have been working with organizations to test and pilot our A.S.E.S.S. worksheets. While we continue to learn something new every day, our team is at the point that we want to share where we are at with a wider audience, get feedback, and learn with you on your social enterprise journey.
Therefore we are pleased to announce the first iteration of our social enterprise capacity building workshop series designed for organizations either developing or scaling their social enterprise *. These workshops have been developed to address a number of key challenges organizations face as they build and scale their social ventures.
Happy New Year! The start of 2019 gives us the opportunity to reflect and learn from 2018. The past twelve months brought the Trico Charitable Foundation amazing insights such as crossing the chasm; the 6 key mindsets of social entrepreneurship; the release of 9 A.S.E.S.S. blogs; social entrepreneurs’, summer students’, and Social EnterPrize recipients’ journeys and learnings; and the grand opening of the Trico Changemakers Studio.
With our definition of social entrepreneurship at the forefront, Trico Charitable Foundation is committed to the development of the social entrepreneurship ecosystem by helping social enterprises figure out their key issues.
To zero in on the testing you need, you have to balance two perspectives. On the one hand, you want to be aware of and prepare for all key risks/thresholds as you move from where you are now to what you want your social venture to be when it is in its ‘steady state’ (i.e. your model has proven to be a success and growth is predictable and steady. A typical barometer in this regard is what your venture will look like five years after it starts). This will also help make sure you are building towards your goals rather than building a bridge to nowhere (this is a significant risk for start-ups, as discussed below). On the other hand, a lot of your current assumptions will be wrong, so you don’t want to go into too much detail too far down the road.
This past summer working at the Trico Foundation’s Summer Student Internship, I was able to take my company from an ideation stage that had undergone 2 years of evolution, to its first pilot, to an official launch of operations, to a now rapid scale of production on its way to reaching a steady state within the next 18 months. Trico Foundation’s one-on-one coaching and group sharing through the A.S.E.S.S. program were pivotal to my progress.
We are extremely delighted to have a number of amazing organizations join us at SVI Alberta to share their own learnings with the ecosystem. We were able to connect with a few of these attendees who shared with us their involvement in social enterprise and what experiences they would like to share, the challenges they are facing and what they hope to discover at SVI Alberta.