Current Events

Trico Foundation & Social Entrepreneurship: 2019 in Review
Happy New Year! The start of 2020 gives us the opportunity to reflect and learn from 2019. 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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A Night of Social Enterprise: Calgary Event Awards $200,000 to National and YYC Leaders
Congratulations to Skwachàys Lodge, recipient of the national Social EnterPrize, and Beaverlodge, CMNGD, Universal Access, and Deepwater Farms for receiving the What’s Next YYC awards.
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Announcing the 10 What’s Next YYC Finalists: Help Decide Who Gets the $25,000 Audience Choice
“These 10 may well be the most amazing collection of Calgary social entrepreneurs I have ever seen. Their diversity, ingenuity and momentum confirm Calgary is a hub of social entrepreneurship activity.” says Dan Overall, Executive Director of the Trico Charitable Foundation.
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Skwachàys Lodge Wins the 2019 $100,000 Social EnterPrize
Presented by the Trico Charitable Foundation and the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary, the biennial Social EnterPrize celebrates Canadian organizations demonstrating best practices, impact and innovation in social enterprise. We are extremely excited to announce Skwachàys Lodge as the recipient of the 2019 Social EnterPrize! The award will be formally presented on the evening of November 21, 2019. Tickets now available!
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Announcing Charmian Love as What’s Next YYC Judge: International Veteran of Social Entrepreneurship Will Also Offer Coaching to Four Recipients
Trico Charitable Foundation and the Haskayne School of Business are extremely pleased to announce Charmian Love as the judge for What’s Next YYC at the Social EnterPrize event on November 21st, 2019. Charmian is also offering the four lucky recipients of What’s Next YYC one hour of one-on-one coaching, which is a huge bonus for any social entrepreneur.
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Applications Now Open for “What’s Next YYC”: Award helps local social enterprises with four $25,000 prizes
What’s Next YYC will showcase ten exciting Calgary and area based social enterprises that have already won awards or successfully completed a local social enterprise support program.
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Trico Foundation Social Entrepreneurship Centre Event Recap
We are still feeling the exciting energy from last week’s announcement of the Trico Foundation Social Entrepreneurship Centre at the Haskayne School of Business! Check out our top social media posts from the event as well as what was shown in the media.
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As capitalism evolves, Calgary poised to be a leader
Amidst shifting perspectives about the role of business in society today, the University of Calgary has announced the creation of the Trico Foundation Social Entrepreneurship Centre at the Haskayne School of Business. As business is changing, so, too, is business education.
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OUT AND ABOUT (May 13-June 11, 2019)
There are a growing number of events connected to social entrepreneurship. Many of them happen in our home city, demonstrating what an incredible hub of activity Calgary is. The Trico Foundation team is pleased to attend many of them and wish we could attend more.
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3rd Canadian Edition of Map the System Selects Finalists & Caps Record Year
On May 4th, 2019, 15 schools gathered in Toronto for the third Canadian edition of Map the System, organized by the Institute for Community Prosperity, in partnership with the McConnell Foundation’s RECODE Initiative, the Trico Charitable Foundation and the Skoll Centre. Congratulations goes out to MRU, SFU, and U of T for advancing to the Global Final hosted at Oxford University! Originally, the plan was to send two teams, but ultimately three teams were deemed worthy by the judges so the three teams get to go to the Oxford finals again!
read moreSocial Enterprise World Forum 2013


Cross Cultural Collaboration: Managing Beyond Borders
A great idea takes great implementation and working across borders (any border) is not always easy. Theory only gets you so far when managing beyond borders, this session enabled attendees to learn from practitioners who do it everyday. This session was moderated by Kristin Hayden, Founder/Executive Director, OneWorldNow! ), and featured: Francesca Agnello, Coordinator, ACRACCS Eve Blossom, Founder, Lulan Artisans Andrea Coleman, Co-founder and CEO, Riders for Health Transcript of session: Kristin Hayden: We’re here to talk about cross cultural collaboration and although we all work internationally, which I think is the very traditional way to think about cross cultural collaboration, we would like to go a little deeper today to talk about how that shows up in all areas of our work, even when we don’t go anywhere. There are lots of cultures and worlds to step in and out of every single day and to be mindful of that and how taking on this work in a cross cultural collaborative way is actually the bigger game. And I think the question that we have asked ourselves too is why is it worth it to do this work which is sometimes actually, very uncomfortable. I thought that yesterday. If you heard the plenary with Al Etmanski, who talked about the spiritual canoe and how there’s room for everybody in that canoe. I love that metaphor. I think that also summarizes much of our approach in cross cultural collaboration. Be he also touched on that it’s really hard and sometimes we don’t want to do it. I appreciated that he named that, that sometimes we would just say ‘it’s... read more
Social Innovation Labs
Labs are an emerging way tackling complex challenges. This panel addressed how they are using this approach in their country and how social enterprises can emerge from this work to enable sustainability. This session was moderated by Tim Draimin, Executive Director, Social Innovation Generation (SiG), and featured: Runa Sabroe, Chief Consultant, MindLab Sarah Schulman, Visiting Scholar, Kennisland Joeri van den Steenhoven, Director, MaRS Solutions Lab While only Joeri’s presentation was recorded, the Q&A of the entire panel is available. Transcript of Joeri van den Steenhoven’s Remarks (includes Q&A): Joeri van den Steenhoven: I think that Sarah Schulman is completely right. We’re part of a big experiment, she called it now the Lab 3.0. I think we’re still finding it out as we go forward what a lab really is and what it actually can provide in terms of value and social good. I would encourage us to learn from each other and have a discussion also later on in this session, but also in the months ahead, about what it actually is this lab. Let me tell you a bit about what we’re trying to do at the MaRS Solutions Lab. I started five months ago, so we’re still very young. I’ve worked, as Tim said earlier, in the Netherlands where I ran a change lab, and I’m basically try to, I love the point that Sarah also raised and, and the experiences that Runa has, with my lab to integrate them into this new initiative called the MaRS Solutions Lab. First of all, why are we doing this? This is a bit of how I look to the... read more
Corporate Social Innovation
Corporations are moving from writing cheques to supporting social purpose work to doing it themselves. SEWF 2013 heard from a panel of experts working in this area, identifying trends and discussing the implications for the social enterprise and not-for-profit sectors. This session was moderated by Steven Fish, ED, Canadian Business for Social Responsibility, and featured: Celia Cruz, Executive Director, Instituto de Cidadania Empresarial (ICE). Andrew Hewitt, Founder, The GameChangers Charmian Love, Chief Executive, Volans Andreas Souvaliotis, Co-founder, Social Change Rewards Transcript of session (includes Q&A): Steven Fish: We’ve got a bit of a standing room only situation, which is great. I was concerned of the term Corporate Social Innovation might be seen as an oxymoron for some people and they might, might bail for other sessions so I’m pleased to see the turnout. Thank you so much for turning out in droves. We’re going to spend a few minutes just sort of framing the discussion and talking a little bit about how we’ve come to the concept of corporate social innovation. CBSR was founded back in ’95, mostly social and environmental entrepreneurs coming out of the Greater Vancouver area. Early members like VanCity Credit Union, Mountain Equipment Co-op, Happy Planet Juices and the like were early members and early social and environmental pioneers. So it’s not a space that’s foreign to us, but the predominant theme for our organization focused a lot more on corporate social responsibility and we’re going to talk a little bit about that today and about the evolution and the maturity of corporate social responsibility and how in my view, which we don’t always agree... read moreEnterprising Spirit Conference 2011
