Since 2013, Montreal native Benjamin Prunty started working on the development of a student-run, healthy, and accessible café at Concordia University called the Hive Cafe Solidarity Cooperative. Benjamin explains the social purpose of the café:
“The café provides community spaces, low cost healthy food, a daily free vegetarian/vegan lunch service, learning opportunities, and participation in decision-making within the organization.”
Benjamin and a group of ambitious students strive hard to build alternatives by providing another food option that addresses sustainability at a systemic level. The Hive Cafe now has over 4500 members and they have also created over 40 student opportunities such as employment and volunteer work.
In June of 2012, Benjamin found himself in a position of leadership during the Montreal student’s protest of tuition hikes. He cites this moment of spearheading campaigns as an inspiration to make a difference:
“My motivation comes from what I would identify as a complete lack of representation through traditional avenues and the need to work outside of those avenues. I actually tie in democratic ownership with social entrepreneurship.”
Benjamin describes the processes the café utilizes to assess their impact:
“We track how many free meals we provide, number of events hosted, number of members, and percentage of organic food.”
Looking to the future, Benjamin and his team plan to continue operations, attempt to clarify governance and avenues for inclusion in decision-making, and create opportunities for increasing profit margins and sales.
[box] A New Chapter of Storytelling
Increasingly, we are seeing that some of the greatest advances in social entrepreneurship and social innovation are coming from students. These stories are being lived, but they are rarely told. As a result, RECODE and the Trico Charitable Foundation are collaborating to survey and interview leading examples of Canadian post-secondary students who are developing social enterprises (for profit or not for profit).
This work seeks to build on RECODE’s survey activities with Emory University in Atlanta, and the insights from the Scaled Purpose and Mount Royal University report “Where to Begin: How Social Innovation is Emerging Across Canadian Campuses”.
It is hoped this research will inform our efforts to help Canada’s post-secondary institutions lead the way in supporting student social entrepreneurs and social innovators. But more than that, it will lead to a series of blogs capturing the students’ journeys. These stories will “reveal how process and purpose can converge to power a new economy for social and ecological impact” and, hopefully, inspire and inform social entrepreneurs within and beyond our Universities.
Stay tuned for updates on RECODE and Trico Charitable Foundation. [/box]