Happy New Year! The start of 2022 gives us the opportunity to reflect and learn from 2021. Although 2021 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.
Founded in Edmonton, Alberta, Iron & Earth is a worker-led non-profit with a mission to empower fossil fuel industry and Indigenous workers to build and implement climate solutions. With the decline of global oil and their mission in mind, Iron & Earth made the decision to develop a social enterprise training company, as a sort of sister organization.
coRISE is a social enterprise in Calgary that upcycles excess food to create nutritious snacks, and then contributes proceeds from that venture to support mental health programs through pet companionship.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
The funding Vecova received from the IRP program is being used to support the re-envisioning of their social enterprises that have a recycling mandate into their Recycling Service social enterprise.