Beautiful Bailout author Shaun Loney points to an emerging paradigm

Shaun Loney, author of A Beautiful Bailout, has been deeply engaged in more than 12 successful social enterprises. He has also been a senior civil servant. He has been walking the walk with social entrepreneurs for decades and offers cutting edge insights into an emerging social innovation revolution. Social enterprise and civil society organizations could find themselves in a newly powerful position to change our culture for the better and by far. Could they be at the centre of What’s Next?

In this provocative podcast conversation, Shaun takes aim at Indian Agents, offers kudos to intrepreneurs, calls for non-profits to ‘get up from the kid’s table,’ for foundations to up their game, and for governments to let go and say ‘yes’ to saving money.

The latest trends in social procurement, social finance, and social enterprise and approaches are worth understanding. They hold the promise of more deeply democratic and ennobling ways of being and working together. As we begin to consider post-pandemic restructuring we will find ways forward spoken of in this conversation.

Listen For:

• 2:50 The main beneficiary of the work of non-profits is the government
• 5:15 Non-Profits, stop giving your outcomes away. Funding paradigm is colonial
• 8:15 How to structure a different kind of relationship
• 14:10 How to bring government, foundations, and non-profits together through Community Outcomes Purchasing. What role each should play. Governments are exhausted
• 25:54 The difference between an Indian Agent and an Intrapreneur
• 32:25 Aki Energy as a living example of how to move forward
• 47:30 Local isn’t necessarily the thing, it is ‘social’ that invites everyone to do business differently
• 54:00 Elements of purchasable outcomes
• 59:00 What is different now that makes for new possibilities

To learn more about Shaun’s latest book visit www.beautifulbailout.com. To explore supports available to non-profits and social enterprises visit www.encompass.coop.

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A Conversation with David Lepage of Buy Social Canada

In the fall of last year, Peterborough City Councillor Kemi Akapo introduced a motion that the City of Peterborough investigate social purchasing. Social purchasing, also known as social procurement, is maturing in its depth of practice and in the number of organizations employing it.

Social procurement has made it into the mandate letters of federal ministries. Partnerships with the federal government in which federal funds are made available will require social procurement practices to be in place.

“Every purchase has an economic, environmental and social impact, whether intended or not. Social procurement is about capturing those impacts and seeking to make intentional positive contributions to both the local economy and the overall vibrancy of the community,” says David LePage of Buy Social Canada. David is visiting Peterborough on January 21-22, 2020.

Social procurement is a way for cities, for example, to leverage their current spending for social gains. By including social goals in requests for proposals and other spending, cities, organizations, and companies become an all-important customer to social enterprises.

Social enterprises function in the marketplace but apply their revenues and ‘profits’ to the pursuit of their social goals, rather than for the distribution of profits to investors or owners. That difference enables them to be reasonably competitive in the marketplace while supplying work environments and opportunities suited to people who experience barriers to employment.

Cities for example, can leverage their current spending on everything from pencils and office supplies, catering to mattress recycling, landscaping to land stewardship.

As a result, social procurement makes it possible to directly address local problems and possibilities at a local level and with local money. Poverty, joblessness and underemployment, even homelessness can be addressed this way. Social determinants of health will all find a home in the partnership between social procurement and social and local enterprise.

This is a big deal.

Social procurement is straightforward but not necessarily simple. Purchasers have to add social and/or green goals to their purchasing requirements. Evaluation is needed. And, social enterprises require good governance, operations skills, the ability to deliver quality goods and services, as well as show they have the supports in place to ensure the success of the people working in them.

In this podcast conversation David shares how ‘the light went on’ around social procurement, the winding road to overcoming hurdles, and the sure-footed steps that can be taken along the road to success. He also shares stories of how purchasers enjoy exercising new-found capacity to make a difference in their community through the great work they do every day. Calgary and Edmonton are leading the way. In British Columbia 21 municipalities are working together with social procurement as a strategy for rural economic development.

David will be in Peterborough from Tuesday, January 21 to Wednesday, January 22, 2020 to meet with purchasers, councillors, social enterprisers, and community members.

Click here to learn more and register for a community-wide conversation January 22 from 2:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

If you are a purchasing agent and are interested in a conversation for purchasers only please contact peter@electriccitymagazine.ca and set some time aside for Tuesday morning, January 21.

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A Conversation with Allan Smith-Reeve

With the advent of Peterborough’s very own tent city, Allan Smith-Reeve wrote and circulated two thoughtful pieces, Poverty’s Not the Problem and How Does Our Wealth Isolate.

In them he turned things on their heads a bit and asked some pointed questions. Allan invited a conversation to explore those questions and this podcast accepts the invitation and extends the conversation.

In this recorded conversation, we explored how loneliness and isolation are symptoms of our prevailing way of life, why any of us would resist, or want to, adopting new ways of doing things, and what some of those already emerging ways might be. Ways. The failure of our large systems to address poverty in a meaningful way came and went as we looked to how we can engage as a community to do better than what has been done so far.

To be sure, ours wasn’t a conversation about saving the poor. In fact, much of the ‘saving’ seemed more to go in the opposite direction, or at least in the direction of taking on new habits of mind and behaviour. Our sense was that those ways of life might bring us more life and stop or slow the hamster wheel of restless productivity, empire, and the worship of capital.

It has been said that one of the most debilitating forms of poverty is a poverty of imagination.

On the whole the content of our conversation was grounding, whole, and at least a little bit imaginative.

Allan  and his partner Lynn Smith-Reeve are the stewards of Bedford House and Bridges Out of Poverty.

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Anti-Racism Activist Bernie Farber Kudos Peterborough

Earlier this year, Bernie Farber, chair of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, was invited by a Peterborough Inter-Faith community to speak at their Many Windows, One Light event. During the morning that followed Bernie spent some time in conversation with Peter Pula.

Bernie believes these are dangerous times. He points to recent hate-motivated murders in Canada. He calls community members to be brave and raise a voice. While he understands this is difficult he says, “if I had to draw a map of how to do this, I would have taken a video of what the people of Peterborough did and show it.”

He said Peterborough is an example to behold.

During their conversation Bernie shares stories and reflections about how people, like those he mentions in Peterborough, are confronting racism and exercising their agency to make a difference. They spoke of the power of words to create worlds and the importance of cutting racism off at the ‘words’ stage. Dialogue and community building are critical elements for staving off the dangerous effects of racism.

Bernie, of Jewish heritage, shared his journey alongside members of First Nations communities to explore the experience of genocide each of their people have experienced.

This recording covers the ground of historical and inter-generational pain, the power of a name, frank observation of dangerous forces, the place of dialogue, and the ways ordinary people are standing up.

Listen to the podcast here.

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On October 27, 2018 community members gathered by the Otonabee River in downtown Peterborough. They donned hard hats and work boots—picked up pry bars and hammers—and they got to work removing layers of asphalt from a municipal roadway.

It’s the first Depave Day of many to come, organized by GreenUp, as part of Green Communities Canada ‘Depave Paradise’ initiative and the DBIA’s Vibrancy Project—and it’s the first depave project in Canada to remove asphalt from a municipal roadway.

Depave Paradise is a project that aims to replace under-utilized built surfaces with porous rain gardens.

As hot political debates carry on about whether certain thoroughfares—like the Parkway—should be built, Electric City Magazine wanted to know more about this initiative to replace a road with greenspace.

Reporter Ayesha Barmania visited the depave site to speak with volunteers, and sat down with Dawn Pond, Depave Paradise project coordinator for GreenUp. Listen to their conversation in this podcast episode.

Music by Mahemingways.

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What does true, deep democracy look like? What if there was a place to incubate the powers within our local civil society, that could be networked and cultivated alongside our current democratic institutions?

Citizen Studios are popping up as hosts to such places on a global scale. In this podcast, Peter Pula reaches into the possibilities a Citizen Studio could bring to Peterborough.

Click here to read a written version.

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It has been seven months since the Resonance Centre for Social Evolution purchased Electric City Magazine from its founders David Tough and Gabe Pollock.

Publisher Peter Pula talks about the efforts and offerings put forth by the ECM team in that time, how it has been possible to date, and what’s next.

Click here to read a written version.

Support Electric City Magazine on Patreon here.

Who understands a neighbourhood better than the people who live there? NeighbourPLAN, a new initiative from GreenUP, is convening neighbours to generate ideas on how to improve the places they live.

Will Pearson sits down with Brookdale area residents Carolyn Code, Carlotta James, and Marilyn Freeman, as well as GreenUP executive director Brianna Salmon, to explore how participatory planning is bringing neighbourhoods together and creating better communities.

Opening credits music: “Heart to Heart” by Nick Ferrio.

Register for upcoming Electric City Magazine Events here.

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How can we respond to the largest public health crisis in modern Canadian history? Opioid addiction rates are growing, and Peterborough now has the fourth highest rate of overdose deaths in Ontario. A far cry from the traditional view of the ‘addict,’ opioid misuse affects people of all types and has touched many of our lives. It’s also forcing agencies to explore new and innovative harm reduction strategies, putting compassion and empathy at the centre in order to help people on their own terms.

Will Pearson sits down with Chris Jardin, Harm Reduction Coordinator at PARN, to speak about stigma, harm reduction, overdose prevention sites, and the changing face of substance misuse.

Opening credits music: “Settle Down” by Prime Junk.

Register for upcoming Electric City Magazine Events here.

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What is ‘food insecurity’? Did you know that for every four to five people who are food insecure, only one will be able to get to a food bank? Did you know that one in two female-lead families are food insecure?

This episode features Will Pearson in conversation with Joëlle Favreau, manager of the Nourish Project, about moving beyond the food bank model, creating connections and belonging through food, and engaging in local food action.

Music by Television Rd

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During Electric City Magazine’s first All Citizens Meeting in May, Will Pearson connected with citizens who reflect on what matters to them most while pioneering a new way to do politics in Peterborough.

Register for upcoming Electric City Magazine Events here.

Support Electric City Magazine on Patreon here.