Tuesday, August 31, 2010

• Verge Permaculture – August Open Yard. The people at Verge Permaculture are opening their doors and Rob and Michelle are ready to chat about permaculture, energy efficiency and growing food. Come out to Our Home (227 Fonda Way SE, Calgary) between 7pm and 9pm to learn more. It’s free but RSVP now because space is limited.
• Toronto Greenhouse – Green Government. It’s a panel discussion about government and the green movement, and of course some networking, at The National Club (303 Bay St., Toronto) from 6:30pm – 10pm. Learn more then show up.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

• The Case for Building an Inclusive Workplace: What’s in it for you? Come out to Santa Maria Goretti Centre (11050-90 Street, Edmonton) from 1:30pm – 4pm and learn how to create an inclusive environment in any space. The Edmonton Chamber of Voluntary Organizations wants to see you there so follow the link for more details and an event agenda. Tickets are $45 for non-members.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

• Victoria – Project Change Management. If you’re part of an existing organization and you’re the one responsible for inspiring change, you’ll love this workshop by the Project Management Centre of Excellence Inc.  Tickets are $229. It’s on from 9am-4:30pm at the Victoria Executive Centre (915 Fort Street, Third Floor, Victoria).

Friday, September 3, 2010

• Treehouse Talks – Great Minds Don’t Think Alike. That’s right, it’s the first Friday of the month. So come to MaRS DD (101 College Street, Toronto) from 6pm – 7:30pm and hear what these people have to say when they are given 15 minutes and no rules.

NEXT WEEK:

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

• Smooth Sailing: Better Board Meetings. You may just be 1.5hours away from happier and more effective board meetings for your emerging company. Sound good? Then come to Edmonton Chamber of Voluntary Organizations’s event from 7pm-8:30pm at the Stanley Milner Library (7 Sir Winston Churchill Square, Room 7, 6th Floor, Edmonton). Tickets are $25.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

• Accessing International Markets Bootcamp. From 8am-7pm, this Canadian Trade Commissioner Service event is a free full day workshop  about how to get your organization into foreign markets.

Monday, August 23, 2010

• Extending the Growing Season. From 7pm – 8:30pm at Hillhurst United Church (1227 Kensington Close N.W.,Calgary). It’s all about green agriculture tips. Tickets are online, $10.
  

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

• Clean Tech Corner – Clean Tech Opportunities 2011. Interested in working with clean energy? Hear about the future of this industry from a panel of experts. Come out to Dazzling Restaurant (391 King Street West, Toronto) between 6:30pm – 9:30pm.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

• Join YSEC on a Patio. It’s starts at 6pm at the Bedford Academy (36 Prince Arthur Avenue,Toronto). RSVP here for free and come out for the fun.
• Networking Entrepreneurs Toronto @ The Local Company. Network with entrepreneurs at the Local Company Resto – Lounge (511 Danforth Ave, Toronto) as of 6:30pm. Tickets start at $8 and can be purchased here.

NEXT WEEK:

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

• Verge Permaculture – August Open Yard. The people at Verge Permaculture are opening their doors and Rob and Michelle are ready to chat about permaculture, energy efficiency and growing food. Come out to Our Home (227 Fonda Way SE, Calgary) between 7pm and 9pm to learn more. It’s free but RSVP now because space is limited.
• Toronto Greenhouse – Green Government. It’s a panel discussion about government and the green movement, and of course some networking, at The National Club (303 Bay St., Toronto) from 6:30pm – 10pm. Learn more then show up.

Friday, September 3, 2010

• Treehouse Talks – Great Minds Don’t Think Alike. That’s right, it’s the first Friday of the month. So come to MaRS DD (101 College Street, Toronto) from 6pm – 7:30pm and hear what these people have to say when they are given 15 minutes and no rules.

1.7 million non profits. How are we going to fund them all?

YSEC has some thoughts (re-posted from TakePart.com):

There are roughly 1.7 million nonprofits operating across the U.S. and Canada, and estimates suggest 45,000 to 60,000 are added to that list each year in the U.S. alone. In my home province of Ontario, one in six workers is employed in the nonprofit sector.  As encouraging as that is, there’s a problem.

Up to now, nonprofits relied on donors or granters for their livelihoods. This limited their capacity to do good, since they were basically living “paycheck to paycheck” from funders. This perpetual vulnerability diverted the staffs’ time and energy from doing the work to raising the funds. Nobody thinks big under these conditions.

It’s a recipe for mediocrity, for short-term reactionary planning. And it’s why so many of our biggest social problems are still rampant. But the world can’t afford small-scale thinking anymore.

So it’s time to do things differently. Social enterprises are ventures that have a triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profit. They provide products and services that make the world a better place, and they do business in greener, more equitable ways. They make money by changing the world, and the more good they do, the more revenue they generate. It enables them to act for big, fast-paced, transformational change.

Young people are at the arrowhead of this movement because they’re the world’s best resource for outside-the-box thinking. That’s why at the Young Social Entrepreneurs of Canada (YSEC) we are cultivating the next generation of social entrepreneurs.

As the first community of our kind in Canada, we expected an uphill battle in spreading the word about social entrepreneurship. Instead, we realized the ground was fertile for seeding social entrepreneurship, especially among young people. The response has been overwhelmingly positive and universal—permeating through class, race and corporate/grassroots lines. In our first year, we worked with more than 500 young social entrepreneurs in Toronto alone, helping them launch social-purpose ventures.

We’ve put our money where our values are by starting the country’s first fund for investing in young social entrepreneurs, and it’s paying off: our inaugural loanee yielded a three-fold return, and we’re almost ready to make our second investment.

In light of ballooning demand from young social entrepreneurs we are launching inVenture: Canada’s first social venture incubator for young people. Next summer, inVenture will bring 15 to 20 of the country’s most promising social ventures to be mentored by leading executives, social innovators and serial entrepreneurs. At the end of the incubator, the participants will pitch to dozens of investors and foundations, trying to secure the funding they need to grow their start-ups. We believe it’s the key first step in accelerating our country’s transition to a smart and equitable economy. Not to mention, the U.S. Department of Commerce reports that business incubators are five to eight times as effective as other public investments in creating jobs; so the economic upside is timely.

And we ask for your support to make it happen. You can TakePart by contributing your votes to help us win the $100,000 we need to make it happen from the Refresh Everything contest.

Social entrepreneurship is the next movement. inVenture will help us to ignite it, and we think that’s worth voting for.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

• Meet the CEOs (an LOK CKO event). Come to The Spoke Club (600 King St. West,4th Floor Entrance/3rd Floor Gallery Host Area,Toronto) from 6pm to 9pm and meet leading industry professionals in an interactive environment and hear what their thoughts on CSR today. Tickets are $100. Follow the link for more details and to register for this event.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

• It’s the YSEC July MeetUp! Come by the usual spot at the usual time (CSI, at 215 Spadina Ave, Toronto, from 6pm to 9pm) and get in on the fun.

Friday, July 30, 2010

• Leveraging Linkedin for Business:How Mastering a Seemingly “Boring” Tool Can Create Your Next Big Opportunity. This workshop on how to use LinkedIn runs from 9am to 1pm and tickets start at $149, early bird pricing.

Besma Soltan runs SPEAKout Poetry, a platform for Canada’s budding talents to express themselves through the art of Spoken Word, unrestrained by social prejudices, religious orientation or cultural boundaries.

Check out their next spoken word competition, Summer Slam 2010, this Aug. 6, 2010 at the ROM.

1) What are you working on and why does it matter?

I am working on SPEAKout, a spoken word competition that started only a year ago, and has done 3 events ever since, with our 4th grand event coming up this Aug. 6 at the ROM.

Through SPEAKout, I was not only able to grow my network and improve my skills, along with gaining new ones, but I also grew as a person through the experiences that myself and the rest of the SPEAKout team went through in order to make the events happen. Working in a grassroots organization and seeing it grow is like becoming a mother; the bigger and better your baby grows, the more proud you are of it and the deeper in love you fall for it.

SPEAKout did not not only introduce me to the spoken word scene, but advanced and improved my knowledge of many issues out there, increasing my awareness through the topics performed by our poets, and through the people I got to know in it and because of it.

SPEAKout also matters because it aims to engage Canada with all its diversity and multiculturalism, and show all of Canada that there is much more that brings us together than what pushes us apart.

2) What motivates you?

My faith has a large role in motivating me, plus having one of my personal life goals being to really make a difference in the world while I am in it, regardless of how small that difference may be, even if it means planting a seed that I won’t see branch out into a tree in my lifetime. I also gain a lot of motivation and push forward through those around me, be it family, friends, colleagues, or very ordinary people that are full of strength and the power to keep going against all odds.

3) What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned recently?

That bad things always happen, whether we like it or not. The trick is to see the positive and good out of it all, and to have that experience gained act as a lesson to push one forward, rather than have them stumble along the way and fall and never get up. I also learnt that a smile and a kind word can go a long way, even if one doesn’t see their results instantaneously. Lastly, I learnt that change is actually possible. One just has to be patient and in constant pursuit of their goals.

4) If you could invite 5 people dead or alive to dinner, who would they be?

Prophet Mohammad, Ghandi, Einstein, Ibn Rushd/Averroes, and my great grandfather.

5) Best resource people don’t know about?

We teach some by what we say. We teach more by what we do. We teach most by who we are. – Be the change you want to be; You can’t make change happen if you aren’t doing it yourself.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

• Toronto Live Interviews. Karl S will be interviewed at the Centre for Social Innovation (215 Spadina Ave, Toronto) between 6:30pm to 8pm. Admission is free, just RSVP to save yourself a spot. Want to know more? Just follow the link.
  
  

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

• Facebook Business Breakthroughs:Harness the Power of the World’s Most Popular Social Networking Site to Attract Customers and New Create Opportunities. Spend some time with Jaime Almond, from 9am to 1pm, at the Centre for Social Innovation (215 Spadina Ave, Toronto) and grow your business through Facebook. Early bird tickets are $97. More info available.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

• Cross Media Hive–Media Strategy Workshop. It’s a full day workshop, from 8am to 5pm, at the Centre for Social Innovation (215 Spadina Ave, Toronto) and learn how to use all different kinds of media. Tickets are $650 and space is limited to 12 people.

NEXT WEEK:

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

• Meet the CEOs (an LOK CKO event). Come to The Spoke Club (600 King St. West,4th Floor Entrance/3rd Floor Gallery Host Area,Toronto) from 6pm to 9pm and meet leading industry professionals in an interactive environment and hear what their thoughts on CSR today. Tickets are $100. Follow the link for more details and to register for this event.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

• It’s the YSEC July MeetUp! Come by the usual spot at the usual time (CSI, at 215 Spadina Ave, Toronto, from 6pm to 9pm) and get in on the fun.

Friday, July 30, 2010

• Leveraging Linkedin for Business:How Mastering a Seemingly “Boring” Tool Can Create Your Next Big Opportunity. This workshop on how to use LinkedIn runs from 9am to 1pm and tickets start at $149, early bird pricing.

Do you have a skill, passion, or hidden talent you want to offer? Do you have a service you’d like to purchase in support of non-profits?

Join YSEC’s special “”Skills Drive”" MeetUP co-hosted with Well of Change on Wednesday, July 28th at the Centre for Social Innovation, 215 Spadina Ave, 4th floor, 6-8pm.

Discover a new way to raise funds for your own organization or favourite charities & non-profits.

Come and donate your services or buy someone else’s.

All proceeds go to YSEC or to your choice of charities registered with Well of Change.

What will we do if we win?

We’ll launch InVenture – Canada’s first program to help young people launch businesses that can change the world.

We’ll bring 20 of the best start-ups we can find, have them learn from Canada’s best business minds, and then fill a room with investors interested in them.

We’ll help build businesses driven by social missions. Businesses that focus on renewable energies & cleantech, micro-finance, global education, health access, arts & culture, etc. Businesses that propel us toward a more social, greener economy as fast as possible.

So why is InVenture important?

• It will create jobs. 97.5% of businesses in Ontario are small businesses. And they account for 52% of net job creation across Canada, according to Statistics Canada.

• Young social entrepreneurs are asking for it. Since January, we’ve had nearly 60 requests for this kind of help.

• We can make it happen. That’s why we’ve recieved letters of support from PM Paul Martin & Premier Dalton McGuinty. We just need the money.

• There’s nothing like it in Canada.

Please vote for us.  Everyday if you can. Here.

Thanks!

- From the YSEC team.

Tuesday, july 13, 2010

• Differencemakers Tour 2010. Meet Alexander Blass and Ian Berry to learn more about sustainability  in all its forms; from corporate social responsibility to social entrepreneurship. This workshop runs from 9am to 6pm at a secret event location that will be emailed out to participants. Ticket prices start at $297 and can be purchased through the link provided.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

• Artscape Office Warming. Artscape just renovated and you’re invited to see the new digs. RSVP by Friday, July 11th. What a great way to get introduced to the new space and the great team at the Artscape Head Office (171 East Liberty Street, Suite 224, Toronto). The party’s on from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.

• July’s Design with Dialogue will be held at OCAD, 6pm to 9pm Wednesday July 14, and will be hosted by Greg Judelman and Peter Jones. So come out to sLAB | Strategic Innovation Lab (OCAD Ontario College of Art and Design, 100 McCaul Street, Room 600, Toronto) and ramp up your website to increase engagement for just $5.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

• Finance & Taxation for FIT Solar Projects. Do more than just learn about finance and taxation for your solar start up, meet and mingle with potential investors. If this panel discussion sounds interesting to you then be sure to be at the Toronto Board of Trade (1 First Canadian Place, Toronto) from 4:30pm to 9:30pm.
• Toronto Net Impact Professional (re)launch. Come out for the welcome back party to remember at Rotman School of Management (105 Saint George Street, Room 134, Toronto) from 6:30pm to 8:30pm