Introduction One of the distinguishing features between the civil law and the common law is the role played by the courts in each system. In civil law jurisdictions the courts traditionally have determined the legal rights and wrongs between litigants, and only exceptionally responded to a party’s request for a “declaration” as to the state…
Frances Lankin’s reflections in this video, “reflections from the retiring executive director of the Toronto United Way,” Frances Lankin discusses the need to pull voices from different communities together to collectively work toward sustainable change. She addresses some of the major challenges facing communities: poverty and engaging youth. Lankin feels that the required changes need…
Letters To (not Always Of ) Joy By Bob Wyatt Published by the Muttart Foundation, Edmonton, ab. Available for download from www.muttart.org http://www.muttart.org/sites/default/files/MTF%20Wyatt%20WEB%202010.pdf A lot has changed since Bob Wyatt left for a Muttart fellowship sabbatical in 2005 to address some nagging questions he had about the power of the voluntary sector to influence policy: governments have been…
Causeway re-imagines money causeway is a collaborative project on social finance anchored with Social Innovation Generation (SiG) National. Causeway invites people to re-imagine money with a goal to fast-track Canada’s adoption of social finance and focus on sustainable social and economic change. SiG is a national collaboration between MaRS, the University of Waterloo, J.W. McConnell…
“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” Peter Drucker, Managing in Turbulent Times (1980) Introduction Social innovation opens up new approaches to addressing complex problems. For most of the 20th century, work in the community sector consisted of “charitable activities,” that is, the alleviation of…
Clay Shirky on Ushahidi from tracking wildlife in kenya to the moderation of elections in Mexico, from snow cleanup in Washington state to risk prevention around forest fires in Italy, Ushahidi is a website that offers a social networking platform for “democratizing information, increasing transparency, and lowering the barriers for individuals to share their stories.”…
Introduction The last thing civil society leaders and their allies probably want right now, given everything else they are dealing with, is yet another analysis of the complex challenges they face in raising money for their sector. However, now is exactly the right time to generate, debate, and act on such analysis. In fact, the…
Introduction Recently, over dinner, a friend asked what i had been working on lately. In reply, I mentioned that I had collaborated with others at Canadian Policy Research Networks (CPRN)—sadly, now defunct—on a paper about trends and developments in social innovation in Canada and internationally (Goldenberg, Kamoji, Orton, & Williamson, 2009). This was an update,…
Practices of innovation are not uncommon in communities, particularly in the social sector where there is a need to innovate to provide new solutions to address pressing local problems. Microfinance, the use of alternate governance models, and the development of social enterprises are some examples of social innovation. According to the Kellogg Foundation, such innovation…
Fair trade, as most northern consumers think of it, began after WWII when Christian missionary and nonprofit charities imported craft products made by their southern partners, including Greek and Italian communities, to sell in northern Europe and the USA. It has since evolved into a much more complex “sector,” involving thousands of products and tens or…