Bow Valley College and Women In Need Society (WINS) have partnered to launch a new on-campus thrift store that combines affordability, sustainability, and hands-on learning. The initiative gives students access to low-cost essentials while creating real-world learning opportunities in social enterprise and community impact.
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We define social entrepreneurship as using business models (selling a good or service) to enhance social impact. This reflects most Canadian definitions.
Many see the social and the entrepreneurial as being in opposition, like two sides of a scale that needs to be balanced. Instead, we see the social and the entrepreneurial as partners in progress.
We support a social entrepreneurship movement that dares to ask, “How far could we go in solving the world’s problems, and even fulfilling our potential as human beings, if we fully harnessed the power of business models to enhance social impact?”
Now it’s time to shift gears and think of your end game – that is, what you want this venture to accomplish when it is up and running (from now on we will refer to this as your stable state). Ultimately, the art of being a start-up or expanding on your existing social enterprise is figuring out how to secure your ‘early adopter’ customer and then build up to your end game with the least amount of risk and the highest chance of success.
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.
Today, the Trico Foundation team is very excited to share that Alexandra Daignault (who is returning for her second summer with us!) and Victoria Ross will be joining us from May to August as we are truly inspired by their passion for their ventures. We look forward to working with them as they develop their social enterprises, learning from them as they bring their ventures through our A.S.E.S.S. process. See below to learn more about Alexandra, Victoria, and the ventures that they will be working on over the summer months.
The social entrepreneur/changemaker sums up his journey as “fumbling towards ecstasy”. He thinks collectively we could be on the cusp of a renaissance in social problem solving, but the 1st step is how we each work on ourselves. With the benefit of his inspiration & insights, we should see less fumbling & more ecstasy.