With less than two weeks to go before our pitch contest we asked previous winner Mike Edwards (Preparing The Trail) to write about his experience and what it meant for him and his business.

On to you Mike…

Socially In Debt

If it were not for Facebook many of us 20-30 somethings might not have had much else to do but sit on our hands over the past 2 years while the economy reformatted its hard drive.

In May 2009, 6 months prior to meeting with Young Social Entrepreneurs of Canada (YSEC) and learning about the YSEC Pitch Competition (via Facebook), I surprisingly joined nearly 10% of unemployed Canadians, many of which were recent university grads like myself, that had found themselves pinned beneath a mountain of student debt, living with their parents (if they were lucky), and fighting an uphill battle towards personal recovery .

It wasn’t until I read an inspiring article that coined the phrase “funemployed” that I realized that the economic turmoil that we were experiencing was being considered as a sign of social reorganization and a blessing in disguise for some. Bingo! With all of this “free time” I could finally show my dad the rocky mountains, read all the books that I had been meaning to read, strengthen personal networks, even start my own business. Maybe I could change the world. So I set out on my mission to build a team of “environmentally active” athletes who would work together at local athletic and tree planting initiatives across the country to preserve our unique Canadian landscape for future generations to enjoy.

Life’s a Pitch!

Soon after that I learned about YSEC and the power of social enterprise. I became a YSEC member in March of 2010 and after hours refining our pitch presentation and meeting with YSEC for pitch training, I suddenly found myself in front of a panel of judges, successfully pitching an idea for my own personal project – a socially and environmentally active not-for-profit now known as Preparing the Trail.

For months prior to the event I had been pitching my concept to business partners, corporate sponsors, friends, family and just about anyone that wanted to listen, until the idea was hardwired into my vocabulary – this is when I realized that I had discovered a true passion. As a tip to anyone out there planning to pitch an idea, make sure that it comes from your heart, find something you love to do, educate yourself on the subject, and spend countless hours making a plan and critiquing your ideas. If you truly have a good idea it will sell itself.

As a reward for winning the pitch competition, my business partner Stu Munro and I were awarded with a 1-year $1000 interest free loan which was invaluable in our first year of growth. At the time we had orders for custom branded promotional tree seedlings from companies like Bullfrog Power and Wholefoods, and since these companies had net 30 day payment terms the money was used to help us afford the seedlings and print material to make those first sales. Once we established cash flow through these sales, through fundraising at local athletic events, and through community building grants we were off to the races (literally!).

We were also rewarded with business consultation services from George Brown College which we used to strengthen our business plan and connect with local angel networks and student volunteers. Additionally, SAM prepared a Social Asset Evaluation for us which we have used to visually express the social, financial, and environmental impact of our operations for the 2010 season.

On a personal note, this experience has helped me gather the knowledge and confidence required to communicate effectively with today’s dynamic community of social entrepreneurs, volunteers, business partners, and investors.

Let’s get growing Toronto!

Mike Edwards

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Mike Edwards is a 26 year old Mechanical Engineering graduate from the University of Waterloo. Mike now works as a Project Manager for Enermodal Engineering – Canada’s largest consulting firm dedicated strictly to building energy and resource efficient green buildings and communities. In his spare time, he dedicates his time as the Founding Director of Preparing the Trail which he hopes to register as a charitable organization in the coming year.

Mike sits on the board of directors for the Halton Social Innovation Centre, a group that is working hard to create a shared space similar to the successful Center for Social Innovation in Toronto. Mike is currently training for a spring marathon, but also enjoys swimming, trail running, and sliding down hills.

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Mike will be one of the judges at this year’s pitch contest as part of the “A Toast to Social Entrepreneurship” celebration on November 25th. Join us as we motivate, inspire and award two $1000 loans to the next generation of youth leaders. This will be an incredible event so don’t miss out. Get your ticket now.

The Globe and Mail’s Your Business asked three of re:Vision 2010’s speakers to answer “Why is mentoring important, and how did you first get involved in it?”.

Check out their full essays at Globe and Mail: What it means to be a mentor.

Catch Tonya Surman and Nathaniel Whittmore at re:Vision Earth Hour and Mark Simpson at re:Vision 2010. Registration still open. Don’t miss out!

We here at YSEC knew it to be true when we first dreamed up the mission and vision of our organization, so it excites us to see that more and more people are catching on to the idea that making system and social change can be a profitable and sustainable endeavor.

“People are realizing that small positive changes add up,” says Geri Stengel, founder of Ventureneer.com. “Those cumulative efforts are not only creating change but also inspiring amazing new social-impact ventures by others.”

Read more on Entrepreneur.com.

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chanc/491168707/

Fall is a season of change and Toronto is definitely inspired this month. In the last week of October there a number of exciting events happening in your neighbourhood.

Three organizations come together and bring us GET Environmental Management System Workshop.  The City of Toronto, the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) and the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA)/GreenTBiz  are helping existing organizations looking to become planet friendly with this one day workshop. One day, but two cities. This event will be held on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 from 9:00am – 4:00pm in Etobicoke’s Civic Centre. And then again in Toronto the next day from 9:00am – 4:00pm in the North York Civic Centre. Tickets are still available here: Toronto registration.

MaRS asks, “How do we build an innovation economy that harnesses the full capacity and creative energy of women?” This Wednesday join MaRS’s experienced all female pannelist discussion at Women Piloting Innovation from 7:30am – 9:15am at their downtown Toronto offices.

Are you looking to be inspired by the collaborative power of arts and sicences? Drop by The Carlu (444 Yonge St, by the College subway stop) on Thursday for Day One, Brown Bag Special at Creative Places + Spaces. Meet some of the world’s most creative thinkers as they discuss the exploration of the art and science of collaboration. Artscape’s Creative Places + Spaces: The Collaborative City tops of this week’s listings with a Friday filled with art-infused experience designed to inspire, empower, and connect thinkers, policymakers and practitioners working to build vibrant, dynamic, sustainable and creative places.

Plan a road trip! Cornell University’s just a five hour drive away, plan your transportation now and make it to their November event, 2009 Net Impact Conference. Professionals and students come together to share experiences and lessons with the sustainable global enterprise movement, including sustainability and corporate responsibility practitioners, social entrepreneurs, and nonprofit leaders. Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, and Seth Goldman, President and TeaEO of Honest Tea will be there, you should go, too.

Keep your eyes open, this city’s filled with great events for your inner social entrepreneur. Whether you’re looking for inspiration, guidance or taking action on your organization’s EMS, it’s all happening this week. Get out there and tell us what you thought of them. Just click here to write us about your experiences with these and other SE related events this week.

What do I like about social entrepreneurship?

A great line from the book Mission Inc.: “you won’t be good at social enterprise unless you’re passionately in love with the very idea of it.” Well I was never in love with business. To put it mildly, words like cash flow, generated revenue, return on social capital, or my favorite word so far is one universities use to describe their students: “revenue generating units”, ranged from incomprehensible to repugnant.

But the social part, that was my true passion. See I never really got why money was so interesting to people, when they are much more interesting than money. And like most people that didn’t understand money, I spent many a university night in my apartment with friends talking about The Man/Architect (in the clouds and counting the world’s till of money) and the end of days over macaroni and cheese. We talked about more, well normal things like: Do we have a purpose? Why Nietzsche got it right or horribly wrong? Where are we going tonight, and who’s this new hottie?

Being around people is great, but being an activist was where it was at, the passion, the conversations, the heat and fury, sometimes the self-righteousness, but always the purpose.

I strongly believed that I had a purpose, that everyone on this planet was born to contribute to something much larger than themselves. It was easy to believe in purpose when you believed in greatness, and I believed in greatness because I saw greatness from a very young age. I was lucky enough to experience both fulfillment and pleasure and got hooked on fulfillment. I found fulfillment in being a human rights activist. They spoke of the conscience in humanity. I learned much later, during my student union year, that a social enterprise does the work of humanity, with humanity.

In our student union, we wanted more accessible student-directed public space, from classrooms, to hallways, to our campus pubs. To organize in any space, students had to go through volumes of paperwork, application deadlines, dos and don’ts. Space was expensive; it took long to book; it was too small, too big, too inconvenient, and with too many rules like: “you ought to have half the attendees be university students”; “you have to have university catering” …. etc.

Those challenges made the difficult job of mobilizing students on campus, off campus, and across clubs, faculties, and campuses much more difficult. Our major campus pub was a nightmare to book. It cost around 3,000 a night and had to be booked 3 months in advance. I sincerely believed that if the university heard the concerns of enough students, things would be different, and with that belief, I believed they were the problem. As much as I would have liked for it to be the case, the problem was much deeper than this. The problem was not only space; it was in our operations. We were amateurs fumbling with a half a million dollars worth of student levy.

I then stumbled across the gold mine of opportunities. I was introduced to a guy who had connections to a huge bar owner who was willing to give us his space for free, with the shuttle busses going to and from campus on a regular basis. The bar was close enough to our campus to be appealing, much larger than our campus pub, had a lounge with pool tables, cheaper drinks, better and more affordable food. It dawned on me. You create competition; you provide a better service more equitably… you stop whining about it and get to work! The space itself held possibilities: what if we could bring our campus artists and musicians and have graffiti jamming nights? What if we could host events across clubs? With minimal overhead expenses, lesser restrictions and a place with potential, a lot of good things can happen.

They didn’t happen, partly because the student union did not have time, and in part because they were suspicious of businesses. I rethought my ideas about the evils of business, because for once I saw the potential of using an enterprise model to create the space for students to connect, mobilize and create more effective change.

With the enterprise model, the enterprise itself is the vehicle and you, with your community, are the drivers of the design, content, and purpose of this vehicle. The enterprise model gives you this imaginary plot of land and forces you to rethink and recreate the way in which you use it for the public good.

I started to fall in love with the enterprise model because it promised more successful social engagement and change. I wouldn’t want to be a business without a mission, and wouldn’t want to compromise my mission and miss out on a golden opportunity simply because I do not trust anything business.

Hence I learned social enterprise without ever hearing about the phrase itself. “Enterprising” something or other would have been a word I associated with a socially awkward telemarketer. I was told about it much later and figured: maybe it is not so lame a word; it holds the promise of making you an effective dreamer. I think the world of social entrepreneurship is the world of human opportunity and potential.

- Lulwa

What’s on your mind? What’s your story? I hope you talk about it, blog about it and share it with us.

Beginning in 11th grade, my parents made several unsuccessful attempts to enrol me in classes on business fundamentals. It just wasn’t my “thing” and I instinctively shied away from everything business because I thought it ran counter to my pursuit of social justice. Business fosters the kind of greed that has made carnage of retirement savings lately, whereas social engagement is about organizing grassroots movements. Or so an idealistic teen thought.

A sunny Sunday morning in April of 2006 changed that view. With the support of a few community organizations, 3 of my peers and I drew over a thousand young Torontonians to Queen’s park in protest of the tragic (and continuing) atrocities in Darfur.

The experience was as exhilarating as it was appetizing, and probably cemented my personal commitment to the social sector. Yet when we reached out to the droves of rally attendants for follow-up action, we began to realize in the weeks and months after that something about social action just wasn’t having a strong enough grasp on mainstream youth. It is a question we have been pursuing ever since.

Young people were confidently modelling themselves as entrepreneurs and articulating visions of success in business, but far fewer were paralleling this identity creation as career social organizers. Why?

One answer that has emerged as we’ve begun to dig is a perceived (and real) lack of financial viability. An entrepreneur braces risk and bootstrapping in return for high reward opportunities. A social organizer parallels that sacrifice in return for what is no doubt a fulfilling reward, but also one where successes don’t prevent you from living as a “starving activist”.

We needed to make social change a viable career option with mainstream appeal. On a plainly pragmatic level, we began to look at social enterprise as a vehicle to deliver social value before we even knew about terms like social-purpose business, social entrepreneurship, etc. It just made sense if we wanted to make a lifestyle of doing good.

Social enterprise holds incredible promise because it’s emerged in the juncture of business and social sectors. It’s why we call young social entrepreneurs the Nexus generation. But it also means that young people will have to navigate two sets of practices, and for many like me, it means activists will have to learn to draw up revenue models. This should be interesting.

It’s time to venture into uncharted territories – something social entrepreneurs and innovators do by nature anyways. Over the next few posts, I’ll shed some light on what building a bridge between two worlds has been like so far, and on some of the struggles and successes we’ve had.

I invite you to add your own experiences, suggestions and contemplations!

Stay tuned.

Assaf