Ideas to Action: Future Strategies + Leverage Lab Notes
May 31st, 2013 | Posted by in Uncategorized - (0 Comments)Ideas to Action notes recorded by Terry Sidhu on 2013-05-31.
Session 1
Q: In your opinion, how is the economy changing?
“I work from home now and am able to make a global impact”
“There is a shift of consumption from resources to information”
“I am now seeing a different bunch of job opportunities”
Q: What is the biggest complex sustainability challenge you would like to see leverage lab take on?
- transportation problems
- Environmental Health
○ “Public Art being good for health”
○ “NYU project turning old chimneys into carbon capture systems, and using the carbon for pencils”
- Carbon Reduction
○ working with businesses and groups to make them carbon neutral
○ tracking solid waste that affect a company’s carbon footprint
○ SOLUTION: “Build a performance matrix. Track carbon output for certain activities and compare to other similar companies.”
Q: How to get businesses/persons to complete a full survey?
- 50 questions to burdensome for completion
- Consider doing a meetup with selected businesses and polling through multiple other ways. (by phone, interview, panelling, focus groups, etc.)
- Introduce innovator businesses to others and share their ideas
- Incentivize completion with food
- Narrow down and combine questions
- “Model questions so that you can build commitment in the beginning, then drive your key questions home.”
- Free coffee at the end of discussions
Session 2
Q: What are your biggest business challenges? (sustainability challenges in BORROW-USE-RETURN model)
“How do we deal with the competitiveness of businesses? How do you get competing businesses to work together and share sustainability initiatives?”
- Make leverage lab a safe space, and get approval for confidentiality within the group
Q: How to create effective pods/cohorts?
- Circular Economy Concept. Where one business’ waste becomes another’s input?
- Can we create the cohorts where one business unit will fit into the next?
- If one of your problems is establishing cohorts, then maybe it would best to make them self organizing.
○ Create a roster of similar companies, and what their common business problems are
- Create a common challenge among a group of companies and allow them to self-organize this way.
○ IE: companies wanting to reduce waste
- “Get people together on common challenges, then survey and break them down into cohorts”
Q: How can I scale up? How can I run a successful event?
- “In my volunteer experience, you need to structure your evening…”
- “You can’t just ask people to go into a room and to socialize…it makes them more protective and uncomfortable”
- “Partner with AISEC or a Rotary organization that are already established internationally”
- Differentiate yourself from PetchaKucha nights and TED talks
Chicken soup for changing the soul
More details
Party to celebrate change
Opposite day – change your routines
Key Q
How do we move forward
Sub Q’s
What structure(s) do we want to create?
What operating principles?
How do we want to
- come together?
- Share responsibility?
- Model adaptive leadership?
Grassroots – not needing a lot of money
Structure – similar to Vancouver ChangeCamp
Volunteers commit to time period (ie. 6 months)
Collecting stories, change can happen anytime (ongoing space)
Annual event
Key goal
To create content
Story of a change you have made in your life?
Inquirer
What is that important to you?
What is meaningful about that for you?
MAKE ART!
Empower people to embrace CHANGE in their lives to expand their comfort zones
We want tot create a network for change (blog, print) so that ideas stories, enthusiasm & contributions may emerge.
What’s the BEST thing that can happen?
Intros – students, lawyer, investments advisor, dad, unemployed person
Value
Reducing frustration for youth
Need for skilled workers
Tap into marginalized
Change the system – new pathways to employment
Storytelling – inspirational
Create movement, possibility to replicate & apply to other markets
Tier 1 labor ready -Identifying guys and barriers advocacy
Benefit to society – industriousness, working w/ your hands
Guilds/ models – mediaval model
Opportunity
Vetting employees and employers – educating inquiry
Advocacy/ education
(camps outside Van?) (resource sec?) (possible issues w/ this – Ft. Mac)
New model – pitch to small contractors, worker/employer owned co-op?
Barriers
Social enterprise needs consistency – good brand
Vetting Proc. Scalable?
New job readiness
Support – certification, not just extra cash
Employment orgs often don’t get private sector
Parnerships
Reduce cost
Access volunteers
VCH
Work BC
Mission possible
Just work
West coast prison justice society
Embers
E Fry Society
Board of Trade
FNES
Bladerunners
COV (social planning)
Dress for Success
BIAs
Van Found
VRCA
Van Found
SBIA
Work Gear
Resources – support
Advisory board
Team in place – W Van
Skilled trades
Next Steps
Who buys – contractors
Why
Who is team – tier 1 apprentices
Who are partners -
“Start small”
A sustained contract – a connection
Leadership – organizational structure
Storytellers
Refining concept
Exploratory conversations
Needs contract
Needs contact or intro to put team up to work
Keep in touch with orgs
Social Enterprise
Works using skills – revenue
Non-profit side focuses on advocacy
Gaps – labour matching
Join three of the projects from Vancouver Changecamp 2013 as they explore how they turn their ideas into action.
Date: Thursday, May 30. 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Location: HiVE Vancouver
Agenda
Project: Leverage Labs
Project: Team Hastings Trade Association
- What is the best way to create a team of like minded members, social enterprises and non profits?
- How to build trust and cooperation within the community?
- Getting to the next level of detail and refining our concept into something concrete.
- What is the growth/financial potential for the social enterprise sector within the skilled trades sector?
Project: Change Everything Day
Did you blog about Vancouver Changecamp? Please let us know and we’ll share it here. Email your session notes and links to vanchangecamp@gmail.com
- William Azaroff, Three Kinds of Leaders
- Cathy Ennis, Fight the Future
Session notes: Place Speak and Helping Politicians Communicate
March 18th, 2013 | Posted by in 2013 - (3 Comments)Notes shared by Andrea Sanchez.
Session I: Place Speak and Helping Politicians Communicate (Rnold and Allison)
- Place Speak is an online Platform to create goals for the government
- How do we engage citizens? Not everyone can go to a public consultation. Lots of people want to have a say in decision making
- Challenges of online consultation:
¨ Anonymity builds contempt. Place Speak verifies you by location so that you can tap on members and verify what area they are from
¨ You have to create a user base
¨ Social media is not the best because your target population may not be valid for what you are researching. Do you know who they are?
¨ Need to keep reaching out to get the word out
- Place Speak:
¨ Identifying what’s important to you and find out what people in your area really care about
¨ Vancouver School Board started using it
¨ $200/year for non-politicians
¨ Participants can see the results (in accordance to the standard in public consultations)
¨ Andrea suggested the incorporation of enabling the general public to have access to certain types of data pertaining to their area, even if they didn’t participate.
- Politicians (progressive ones in particular) need help. They are very accessible
- Change is about communicating with politicians. More so than just voting
- Things happen after politicians get elected, that can be unexpected
- A legislation can be influenced in a lot of different ways before it gets approved
- Some politicians think that if an issue is not on the media (or a letter addressed to them), then it’s not really an issue. So they need to be more open.
- How do you get a more diverse group that’s not just the typical group that always gets engaged
- Being told you are important, while being told you are stupid at the same time, may drive some politicians to simply stop listening
- Do we need an ombudsman? Someone who’s solely dedicated to listening..
- Where can we find information about our political structure and how to get engaged politically?
¨ Booklet for Citizenship is a very good resource
¨ West Coast LEAF(for women’s issues): 2 day workshop in “Transforming your future”
- Get politicians to make public promises to hold them accountable
- Write to your MP. They like having constituents and community feedback
- Politicians also need to be told what they did good too. Successes are important for their development. Otherwise insensitivity can build up and it makes them numb. Don’t let the scabs form.
- Final question: How do I engage politically, and what would inspire me to get engaged?
We had another successful event with huge thanks to our organizers, facilitators, volunteers, sponsors and participants! Looking forward to hearing your feedback and future outcomes! Please share your thoughts/ notes from yesterday at www.instal.ca
Session Proposal: Engaging millenials
March 13th, 2013 | Posted by in 2013 | Citizen Engagement - (1 Comments)Arpy Dragffy from ibelievein.com will be pitching a discussion that asks, What engages millenials to act for good most: fun, seeing change, being part of something, doing the right thing?
We’re all faced with questions about what the motivators are to get millenials to act for good and change. With countless organizations literally competing for attention and intention from this group, most are ignored or barely considered. Others are dominating the charitable world but why? Is it because they deliver the right program matching with the right person? Or is it due to the sheer size and awareness of those campaigns which often have large budgets?
What ideas will you bring? Submit a topic of discussion.
