Social Enterprise Workshop
In order for our villages to thrive and to revitalize our small town business communities the Social Enterprise Business Model offers the best of all worlds.
Social Enterprises are businesses whose primary purpose is the common good as it provides jobs for workers and needed services and goods to communities.
Why would you want to use the Social Enterprise Model?
- To meet a need in the community, to make and produce goods and provide services.
- To advance a specific social, environmental or cultural mission
- To contribute to the financial stability of a non-profit organization.
One of the best known businesses in Canada that is a social enterprise is Value Village.
This company now employs over 15,000 people in the US, Canada and Australia, but it began as a lone thrift shop in San Francisco in 1954.
Along with the employment opportunities it provides, which are not corporate slavery positions! Value Village also helps the planet by recycling goods so our still useful discards don’t end up in landfills, and it supplies folks with household goods and clothing at a fraction of their new cost.
Plus, by buying used and recycled goods, consumers are not supporting the slave labour conditions that are the norm in the third world country factories that make nearly all of the clothing and products now available in our stores.
Using the Social Enterprise model would be a way for our villages to create and grow businesses that provide much needed jobs and income,. They’d also produce and provide goods and services that people now leave town to acquire, and promote a sense of togetherness and community that is sorely lacking in these days of global corporate control systems.
We’ve been working on a Shop Local initiative here in Perth-Andover, and have begun the non-profit business support group called the Perth-Andover Business Connection. As we’ve spoken to folks about why they do or do not shop locally, several people have brought up socks.
Why socks became the common denominator of stuff we can’t get in Perth-Andover I do not know, but it’s an item that keeps coming up!
The comments go something like “Well I have to leave town to buy a pair of socks so I do all my shopping out of town at the same time.” Ouch.
Incidentally, you can get good work socks at Marty’s Electric in Perth, but I do realize that these people are looking for kid’s and ladies’ socks! But I digress.
In the instance of Perth-Andover, a Co-Op Community Department Store created on the Social Enterprise Model would be a tremendous boon for the village.
All of our small rural communities have needs for certain goods and services that are not being met locally, and these needs offer the perfect opportunity to create a Social Enterprise Business.
We all need to eat, so local food production would make for fantastic social enterprise opportunities.
A marvellous and successful example of a gardening social enterprise is the “Incredible Edible Todmorden”.
This town in Britain has turned nearly every available space or vacant lot in the town into community orchards, herb beds and vegetable gardens.
It looks beautiful, everyone in town is engaged with each other, and it has provided jobs, food, and a vital sense of community.
It is Community Supported Agriculture at its best!
They have a great website that is chock full of ideas, advice and tools on how to achieve your own incredible edible community.
When we are all in the project of living good and abundant lives together, and not pursing profit only no matter the cost to the environment or individuals, everyone is fed and taken care of which will make the world a much better home for all!
Stephanie Kelley
