January has been our most exciting month yet here at L3. Between partnering with DUCA Impact Lab and running not one but two workshops, we’ve been busy!
Waterloo Region Workshop
We invited some of our friends and colleagues in Kitchener-Waterloo, including key players in small business and social enterprise like Community Futures and Iler Campbell, for a one-day mini workshop at our evolv1 Make Change classroom on January 15.
Not only did it allow us to run through some of the activities we planned for the Toronto workshop at the end of the month, but we also got to get conversations going early about what kind of local capacity can be built for facilitating stronger succession planning and social purpose conversion supports in the region. Thank you to all our participants and we look forward to more workshops soon!
Happy Birthday Sean!
Principal Investigator Sean Geobey celebrated his birthday in January. We ate delicious donuts and debriefed our Waterloo Region workshop.
Vancouver
Lab Coordinator Tara Campbell and Project Manager Meg Ronson were joined by the rest of the IRP Partners in Vancouver last month to forge stronger institutional connections and deepen our commitments to deliver services to all Canadians. L3 was grateful for the opportunity to investigate some of the challenges facing Canada’s vulnerable and under-serviced communities, and to prioritize the accessibility of our outputs while we change Canada’s social enterprise landscape.
While in Vancouver, we got to join heads with some of the social finance leaders in Western Canada to start mapping our Vancouver Workshop, targeting October 2020.
DUCA Impact Lab
We were also pleased to welcome DUCA Impact Lab as our first Platinum Sponsor for the Toronto Workshop. We are looking forward to continued collaboration with DUCA Impact Lab as they investigate their own role in social purpose conversions alongside L3’s efforts. Contributions like theirs are what powers L3’s long-term vision of a sustainable future for small business and social enterprise in Canada.
Toronto Workshop
The long-anticipated L3 Toronto Workshop Presented by DUCA Impact Lab was delivered on January 29 and 30 at the Ontario Investment and Trade Centre.
32 leaders in social finance, small business, and co-operative and social enterprise development from across Canada shared their time, their stories, and their expertise in an intense but hugely rewarding two-day session. We are very proud of our first instalment and look forward to sharing the results with everyone very soon!
Next stop: Halifax!
Our next Workshop, Frame, will be in Halifax on April 22nd and 23rd! More details are coming soon, but we can’t wait to visit Atlantic Canada this spring.
Connect!
Join our mailing list here.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Join our LinkedIn group here.
About Legacy Leadership Lab (L3)
L3 is an 18-month initiative by the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience, funded by the Government of Canada’s Investment Readiness program. We are leading five Workshops from coast to coast to help build expert-driven solutions for Canada’s transitioning small business community. During these Workshops, the we will develop market interventions and prototypes that allow conventional and social finance players, business service providers, and community leaders to facilitate social purpose conversions of existing businesses in their own towns.
About Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR)
WISIR is a research institute at the University of Waterloo’s School of Environment, Enterprise and Development committed to generating trans- and inter-disciplinary knowledge about social innovations and the social innovation process (the dynamics of learning, adaptation and resilience). Our approach is to pursue collaborative research and projects that bridge University of Waterloo departments, involve researchers from around the world, and engage those beyond academia. We seek to mobilize this knowledge through a range of new curriculum offerings and training opportunities - both within and outside of a university setting.