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Shining light on our thinking & doing, our epiphanies & struggles, & our movement.

EMBERS Staffing Solutions: Amazing Social Enterprise Collects Governor General’s Innovation Award and Continues to Shine

As one of our favourite examples of a Canadian social enterprise, a 2013 Social EnterPrize recipient, EMBERS Staffing Solutions (ESS) continues to excel by using the power of business models to solve social problems. Since the last time we touched base with Founder and CEO, Marcia Nozick in early 2019, ESS has paid 9.2 million in wages and benefits and grossed 11.6 million in sales.

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Trico Foundation & Social Entrepreneurship: 2020 in Review

Happy New Year! The start of 2021 gives us the opportunity to reflect and learn from 2020. Although 2020 came with its many challenges, the past twelve months were busy, historic, and made great progress in advancing both social entrepreneurship and Calgary’s role as a hub for social entrepreneurship.

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Spotlight on IRP Recipients: Biosphere Institute of the Bow Valley

Not only does the Biosphere Institute of the Bow Valley (Biosphere) offer award-winning education, research, and community engagement programs, they also continue to serve as a community resource centre, maintaining thousands of records on local ecology and planning in their public library. Biosphere is now looking to undertake business and financial planning for a new social enterprise they helped to create, called Bow Valley Green Energy, to prepare it to accept investments in community-owned and-managed renewable energy projects.

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Spotlight on IRP Recipients: Redefin’d

Looking to the future, Redefin’d is excited to start their new journey:

“This funding has allowed us to take inventory of the learnings of the last few years and clearly define what it means to become a radically regenerative community. Our vision for the future is to open a live-in community on a rural farm that will transform the lives of 1,000 people by 2030.”

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Spotlight on IRP Recipients: Centre for Sexuality

Centre for Sexuality’s goal is to build their Training Centre into a sustainable business that generates a significant amount of revenue. Looking to the future, they have a vision to provide training and consulting services to customers throughout North America focused on diversity, inclusion, and equity in workplaces.

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Spotlight on IRP Recipients: Leftovers Foundation

The IRP funds Leftovers received are being used to start a cafe featuring redirected rescued food, upcycled food products, and sustainably sourced coffee. The café will also use a pay-what-you-want pricing model to increase dignified access to nutritional food.

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Spotlight on IRP Recipients: Medalta

The IRP funds Medalta received are being used to increase production volume, product selection, and capacity of their Working Pottery to enter into larger wholesale contracts, through upgrades of production and safety equipment.

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Alberta’s Council on Charities and Civil Society Issues Report

The Premier’s Council on Charities and Civil Society (the Council) launched a targeted engagement process in July 2020 to determine what lessons could be learned from the COVID-19 experience to date, and to provide advice on the sector’s future recovery and capacity building opportunities. Key opportunities for civil society recovery include enhancing collaboration, coordination and integration of services, improving research and data, capitalizing on new and existing technology, strengthening civil society’s financial foundations and strengthening social finance and social enterprise.

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Universal Access: A What’s Next YYC Update

Founder, Accessibility Visionary, and Entrepreneur Sean Crump understood first-hand the challenges of inaccessible spaces after an accident left him paralyzed at 19 years old. Sean then launched Universal Access, accessibility consultants that provide assessments and certifications to multiple locations that meet their physically barrier-free standard.

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