Here at SEA Change we are excited to see the growing support in Calgary for the social entrepreneurship movement. In the past month, 5 Calgary Social Enterprises have been honoured.
Calgary Chamber’s Small Business Week Award for Environmental Stewardship
In October, Green Start Initiatives Ltd. won the Calgary Chamber’s Small Business Week (SBWYYC) Award in the category of Environmental Stewardship. This honour makes Green Start founder Kevin Davies the youngest CEO to ever win a SBWYYC award.
As per the Calgary Chamber’s Small Business Week website, Green Start Initiatives Ltd. provides condos, multi-family homes and businesses in Calgary with recycling services. One thing Green Start does which separates them from their competitors is that they give their customers detailed monthly Impact Reports. This tells customers just how much waste they’re diverting from the landfill by using their service, and how this helps the environment by sharing statistics on the monthly materials they’ve recycled, such as CO2 prevention, tree savings, landfill conservation, and more.
Social Venture Partners Social Innovation Fast Pitch
On November 5th, Social Venture Partners, in partnership with the Trico Charitable Foundation, hosted an exciting event that included 4 non-profits pitching their social enterprises “Dragon’s Den” style. Pam Krause from Calgary Sexual Health Centre gave a confident, entertaining and effective 3-minute pitch that resulted in a $10,000 win for their sex toy social enterprise.
The audience choice prize of $1,000 went to Autism Calgary’s amazing social enterprise aiming to create meaningful IT employment for people with Autism.
The coaches award went to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Society. Their hearing equipment social enterprise was awarded with $2,000.
Good Company’s Grow Your Good Initiative
Last but not least, I’m humbled to announce that as the winner of Good Company‘s inaugural Grow Your Good initiative my new social enterprise SEA Change Nation has won $1,000 in free design.
SEA Change Nation‘s innovative model has been uniquely designed to transform youth into social entrepreneurs during their employment in one of our for-profit social enterprises. (The first to be launched is a teen consignment clothing store in 2013.) We are excited to be working with the creative team at Good Company on our new logo!
