too long for a tweet, too short for a blog post...
The SiG@Waterloo "Innovators in Action" Speaker Series, will apply the ideas of social innovation to a number of specific sectors and issues - education, youth mentorship, inclusion, collaboration and cultural change. Each of the keynote speakers will share their experiences of operating at the national level to identify and address the root causes of intractable social challenges. Each keynote lecture will be followed by a local panel discussion who will share their reflections on the presentation and offer insight into their own experiences.
May 5 - Ric Young at The Museum, Kitchener, ON
May 19 - Cindy Blackstock at The Museum, Kitchener, ON
June 2 - Penny Milton at the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery, Waterloo, ON
June 16 - Ilse Treurnicht at the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery, Waterloo, ON
June 23 - Bruce MacDonald at the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery, Waterloo, ON
All lectures are FREE to attend. RSVP required.
Spaces are limited. Register to attend below!
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Time: 7pm-9pm
Venue: The Museum, 10 King Street West, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
Ric Young - Architect of numerous campaigns for change and one of Canada's leading authorities in the field of social innovation.
Eric (Ric) Young was a pioneer in the field of social marketing. He cut his teeth on the early stages of the PARTICIPaction campaign, and was co-founder of Canada’s first dedicated social marketing agency. He left that company in the mid-90s to start E.Y.E. | The Social Projects Studio™ – a company dedicated to the creation and development of breakthrough social change initiatives. Working with leading government, corporate and not-for-profit clients, he became increasingly frustrated by the inadequacy of the tools, models and methods society has at hand for tackling our most complex problems. This led him, in the year 2000, to propose to DuPont Canada that they embark on an initiative “to foster new mindsets, new skill sets, and a new culture for social innovation in Canada”. He worked with DuPont over several years to develop the Social Innovation Initiative, eventually forging a partnership with McGill University to create one of the world’s first social innovation think tanks. This think tank gave rise to the best-selling book, Getting To Maybe. He is on the faculty of the Boston College Centre for Corporate Citizenship. His current voluntary roles include: membership on the board of Ecotrust Canada, the Canadian advisory board of Right To Play and the editorial board of the Social Marketing Quarterly. He is a fellow of The Royal Society of the Arts, a member of Massey College’s Quadrangle Society, and a fellow of SiG (Social Innovation Generation) at the University of Waterloo.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Time: 7pm-9pm
Venue: The Museum, 10 King Street West, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
Cindy Blackstock - Executive Director of First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada.
A member of the Gitksan Nation, she has worked in the field of child and family services for over 20 years. Key interests include exploring the over representation of Aboriginal children in child welfare care, structural drivers of child maltreatment in First Nations communities, human rights and the role of the voluntary sector in expanding the range of culturally and community based responses to child maltreatment.
Current professional interests include serving as an Atkinson Economic Justice Fellow, J.W. McConnell Family Foundation Social Innovation Generation Fellow, co-director of the Centre of Excellence for Child Welfare and a board member of the National Aboriginal Youth Organization.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Time: 7pm-9pm
Venue: Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery, 25 Caroline Street North, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Penny Milton - CEO of Canadian Education Association.
Penny Milton has been Chief Executive Officer of Canadian Education Association since 1996. She was past Chair of the Toronto Board of Education, Executive Director of the Ontario Public School Board Association, and served as Deputy Minister of the Ontario Premier’s Council of Health, Well-being and Social Justice. She has held several public appointments including current membership on The Minister’s Curriculum Council and Governance Review Committee for Ontario. She was a founding Director of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation and now serves as a Director of ArtsSmarts and Goodwill Industries. She is the author of several book chapters, numerous articles and presentations on policy issues in education.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Time: 7pm-9pm
Venue: Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery, 25 Caroline Street North, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Ilse Treurnicht - CEO of MaRS Discovery District.
Ilse Treurnicht is the CEO of MaRS Discovery District, a leading innovation centre located in Toronto. She oversees both the development and operations of the MaRS Centre and its broad suite of entrepreneurship and innovation programs.
MaRS offers advisory services, market intelligence and entrepreneurship education to emerging companies in health care/life sciences, digital media/ICT, cleantech and social purpose businesses across Ontario. Ilse has worked closely with the leadership of Toronto's academic institutions and teaching hospitals to create MaRS Innovation, an integrated commercialization platform for 14 Toronto Institutions and served as the interim Managing Director for a year following its formal launch in early 2008.
Ilse joined MaRS in early 2005 from her role as President & CEO of Primaxis Technology Ventures, a start-up stage venture capital fund focused on the advanced technologies sector. Prior to Primaxis, Ilse was an entrepreneur with senior management roles in a number of emerging technology companies.
She is an active member of Canada's innovation community, and has served on the boards of private companies, industry associations and research organizations, and has been a member of several government advisory panels.
Ilse holds a DPhil in chemistry from Oxford University, which she attended as a Rhodes scholar.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Time: 7pm-9pm
Venue: Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery, 25 Caroline Street North, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Bruce MacDonald - President and CEO, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada.
In 1995, Bruce joined the staff of Big Brothers and Sisters of Canada as Director of Marketing and Special Events. Three job titles and two organization names later, Bruce eventually moved into the senior staff position, becoming President and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada in March 2004. Prior to BBBSC, Bruce was involved with the Hamilton-Burlington YMCA, Stoney Creek YMCA, Ontario Senior Games and the Kinsmen and Kinette Clubs of Canada. Bruce holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Sports Administration from Laurentian University and a Masters in Management in the Voluntary Sector from McGill University.
Attended a talk on the global water crisis presented by one of our SiG McConnell Fellows, Michele-Lee Moore.
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YSEC just got funding. Guess who we're giving it to?
We're offering generous subsidies to attend re:Vision 2010, and extending registration.
Apply by this Monday, March the 8th to be eligible for subsidies. Regular registration ends March 13th.
Who's Attending re:Vision 2010?
  re:Vision is a weekend conference for leaders, organizers, activists and entrepreneurs in Ontario, aged 17-34, who are spearheading social initiatives in their communities. If you're making positive change in your community, you might be who we're looking for.
Why should you attend re:Vision 2010?
You'll be among the province’s most innovative young leaders as you gain the foundation you need to make your projects more sustainable and have a more lasting impact. You will leave with practical know-how, new lenses for project design, a wealth of earned knowledge that can be applied to your initiative, and a strong network to help you along the way.
What is Social Enterprise?
Social enterprises are organizations that apply market-based strategies to address social issues. These issues can be local or international, spanning health, education or the environment. Using a variety of financial models including both for- and not-for-profit, they are mission-driven enterprises that measure success with a triple bottom line: people, planet and profit.
Who are We? Young Social Entrepreneurs of Canada (YSEC) is a youth-led non-profit organization that aims to ignite a nation-wide movement of young social entrepreneurs who align people, planet and profit. Running a variety of networking and skill-building programs and services for young Canadian social entrepreneurs, YSEC serves as both a community-hub and a grower of youth-led social enterprises.
Exactly what will I be doing at re:Vision 2010? Check out our newly updated full program here
How do I apply? Apply Online Here. Registration is limited to 100 participants.
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Pleasantly surprised to find my talk from the EpCon conference in Waterloo last week featured on TechVibes today.
From the article by Karim Kanji
When it comes to technology I've always been of the belief that if it can't make life easier or simplier, then who cares. So, when it comes to creating positive social change, I'm all ears. Last Friday, Renjie Butalid, Communications Coordinator for Social Innovation Generation at the University of Waterloo, spoke at EPIC's EpCon 2010 event in Waterloo, Ontario.
Renjie challenged the delegates to question how they could use their education to use technology to transform social dilemmas. Renjie, himself, is passionate about using online communities, technology and social media to create positive social change. Furthermore, he is convinced that young people have the power and opportunity, like never before, to affect positive change in the world.
During his presentation he cited four examples of companies and initiatives that have used technology to create
meaningful societal change:
- KIVA - A dream of lending to low-income entrepreneurs via the internet is now one of the largest and most successful micro-lending programs in the world with thousands of people now able to live in dignity.
- Cell-Life - The vision of Cell-Life is to improve the lives of people affected by AIDS in South Africa through the use of mobile technology.
- SIMpill - According to their website, the SIMpill Medication Adherence System monitors the patient's medication schedule and intake of medication and reminds patients and carers as necessary by sending a text message to the patient and/or carers mobile phone if the patient does not take their medication as prescribed.
- MoCa - MoCa connects health workers in developing nations to medical professionals around the world via mobile technology.
To date, more than $10 million has been raised via SMS for Haiti earthquake relief. With two-thirds of Africa's 4.5 billion people using some sort of mobile technology in the next 2 years, the opportunity for social change is not just a hope anymore: it's real.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WATERLOO, Ont. (Thursday, Jan. 7, 2010) - An internationally acclaimed social innovator, once praised by South Africa's Nelson Mandela, will give a public lecture later this month and launch his latest book on how to effectively deal with pressing problems in society.
Adam Kahane, author of Power & Love: A Theory & Practice of Social Change, will deliver this year's Waterloo lecture on social innovation on Wednesday, Jan 27 at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo. The event, which begins at 7 p.m., is presented by Social Innovation Generation at the University of Waterloo, Region of Waterloo, CIGI, Capacity Waterloo Region and Musagetes.
The annual lecture highlights world-class thinkers with new ideas on how to achieve significant, durable social change for increasingly complex social problems.
"Kahane will discuss power, our desire to achieve our own purposes, and love, our desire to heal the whole, as complementary drives that are both required to effect sustainable social innovation and change," said Frances Westley, a University of Waterloo professor who holds the J.W. McConnell Chair in Social Innovation.
In the lecture, Kahane will draw on his extensive experience with designing and leading complex multi-stakeholder change processes to offer practical guidance for effectively balancing power and love, two usually polarized drives.
Kahane, a facilitator and partner with Reos Partners, is well-known for a distinct approach to scenario thinking and development, which played a key role in moving South Africa from apartheid to democracy in the 1990s. He is also an associate fellow of the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School.
His earlier book, Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities, earned high praise from Mandela. The former South African president called it: "A breakthrough book that addresses the central challenges of our time - finding a way to work together to solve the problems we have created."
Tickets for the lecture cost $25, and include admission, a copy of Adam Kahane's latest book and a reception. For registration and more information on the lecture, visit www.sig.uwaterloo.ca.
About Social Innovation Generation, University of Waterloo
Social Innovation Generation is a collaborative partnership between the Montreal-based J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, University of Waterloo, MaRS Discovery District in Toronto and PLAN Institute in Vancouver designed to foster a culture of continuous social innovation in the country. The SiG project is focused specifically on social innovations that have durability, impact and scale. SIG focuses on profound change processes and encourages effective methods to address persistent complex social problems on a national scale. For more information, go to www.sig.uwaterloo.ca.
About University of Waterloo
In just half a century, the University of Waterloo, located at the heart of Canada's Technology Triangle, has become one of Canada's leading comprehensive universities with 28,000 full- and part-time students in undergraduate and graduate programs. Waterloo, as home to the world's largest post-secondary co-operative education program, embraces its connections to the world and encourages enterprising partnerships in learning, research and discovery. In the next decade, the university is committed to building a better future for Canada and the world by championing innovation and collaboration to create solutions relevant to the needs of today and tomorrow. For further details, visit www.uwaterloo.ca
Ashoka Canada Induction 2010
Join us to celebrate the 11 new Canadian Ashoka Fellows
RSVP: http://ashokainduction.eventbrite.com/
Thursday, January 14th, 2010
5:30 pm
MaRS Centre Auditorium
101 College Street, Toronto, ON M5G 1L7
Light refreshments will be served
Featuring
* The eleven new Canadian Ashoka Fellows
* David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World
* Célia Cruz, Ashoka Canada Director
* Fellows Mary Gordon & Al Etmanski, Masters of Ceremonies
* Guests will have the opportunity to engage with leading social entrepreneurs
For more information, contact:
Elisha Muskat
emuskat@ashoka.org
(416) 646-2333
Leading Transformative Change
Ashoka is the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs—men and women with system changing solutions for the world’s most urgent social problems. Since 1981, we have elected over 2,000 leading social entrepreneurs as Ashoka Fellows in 63 countries. In Canada, 27 Fellows are leading transformative change, inspiring others nationally and globally to be changemakers.
Our Vision
Ashoka envisions a world where Everyone is a Changemaker: a world that responds quickly and effectively to social challenges, and where each individual has the freedom, confidence and societal support to address any social problem and drive change.
Final text of the Copenhagen Accord 2009
From the guardian.co.uk - December 21, 2009
We're all eco-warriors now after world leaders failed us at Copenhagen
What did the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen achieve? Our governments failed to agree a deal which might have avoided a global catastrophe. They did nothing but take yet another "important first step". We've had nearly two decades of those.
It's likely that Copenhagen is a long-term disaster for the planet and its people, but it might have another, more immediate consequence for you right now. Your moral obligations might have just changed dramatically. In situations like the one we're in now, the demand for action shifts from our leaders to us. They missed what might have been our last chance to take to take concerted, worldwide action on climate change, so the rest of us have to do something about it. Their failure means that we're all eco-warriors now.
The Builder's Manifesto
Umair Haque, over at the Harvard Business Review, has an excellent post titled The Builder's Manifesto, that speaks directly to the article from The Guardian above. It is certainly worth reading.
It seems that in order to tackle the most complex of social problems that we face in our world today, we don't need more leaders... we need builders.
Excerpt from The Builder's Manifesto below (bold emphasis mine):
What leaders "lead" are yesterday's organizations. But yesterday's organizations — from carmakers, to investment banks, to the healthcare system, to the energy industry, to the Senate itself — are broken. Today's biggest human challenge isn't leading broken organizations slightly better. It's building better organizations in the first place. It isn't about leadership: it's about "buildership", or what I often refer to as Constructivism.
Leadership is the art of becoming, well, a leader. Constructivism, in contrast, is the art of becoming a builder — of new institutions. Like artistic Constructivism rejected "art for art's sake," so economic Constructivism rejects leadership for the organization's sake — instead of for society's.
Builders forge better building blocks to construct economies, polities, and societies. They're the true prime movers, the fundamental causes of prosperity. They build the institutions that create new kinds of leaders — as well as managers, workers, and customers.
Beyond War and PeaceOur two most common ways of trying to address our toughest social challenges are the extreme ones: aggressive war and submissive peace. Neither of these ways works. We can try, using our guns or money or votes, to push through what we want, regardless of what others want—but inevitably the others push back. Or we can try not to push anything on anyone—but that leaves our situation just as it is.These extreme ways are extremely common, on all scales. One on one, we can be pushy or conflict averse. At work, we can be bossy or “go along to get along.” In our communities, we can set things up so that they are the way we want them to be, or we can abdicate. In national affairs, we can make deals to get our way, or we can let others have their way. In international relations—whether the challenge is climate change or trade rules or peace in the Middle East—we can try to impose our solutions on everyone else, or we can negotiate endlessly. These extreme, common ways of trying to address our toughest social challenges usually fail, leaving us stuck and in pain. There are many exceptions to these generalizations about the prevalence of these extreme ways, but the fact that these are exceptions proves the general rule. We need—and many people are working on developing—different, uncommon ways of addressing social challenges: ways beyond these degenerative forms of war and peace.A character in Rent, Jonathan Larson’s Broadway musical about struggling artists and musicians in New York City, says, “The opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation!” To address our toughest social challenges, we need a way that is neither war nor peace, but collective creation. How can we co-create new social realities?Two fundamental drivesTo co-create new social realities, we have to work with two distinct fundamental forces that are in tension: power and love. This assertion requires an explanation because the words power and love are defined by so many different people in so many different ways. In this book I use two unusual definitions of power and love suggested by theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich. His definitions are ontological: they deal with what and why power and love are, rather than what they enable or produce. I use these definitions because they ring true with my experience of what in practice is required to address tough challenges at all levels: individual, group, community, society.Tillich defines power as “the drive of everything living to realize itself, with increasing intensity and extensity.” So power in this sense is the drive to achieve one’s purpose, to get one’s job done, to grow. He defines love as “the drive towards the unity of the separated.” So love in this sense is the drive to reconnect and make whole that which has become or appears fragmented. These two ways of looking at power and love, rather than the more common ideas of oppressive power and romantic love (represented on the cover by the grenade and the rose), are at the core of this book.
Adam Kahane will be speaking at the Waterloo Lecture on Social Innovation on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
At the Waterloo Lecture, Adam Kahane will discuss power, our desire to achieve our own purposes, and love, our desire to heal the whole, as complementary drives that are both required to effect sustainable social innovation and change.
I have blogged about Adam Kahane in the past, after I read his first book, Solving Tough Problems, which I found to be quite insightful.
I am certainly looking forward to hearing him speak at the Wateroo Lecture on Social Innovation at CIGI next month.
You can register to attend the event here.
