Affordable Housing, Food Supply, and a Prize to Honour World Benefit
In Toronto the YWCA Elm Centre makes 300 affordable housing opportunities available for women and women-led families. In Vancouver Quest Food Exchange captures food that would otherwise have gone to waste and builds a grocery business with 420,000 customers and prices that are 35-95 per cent lower than supermarket prices.
Does that rock, or does that rock?
These organizations are but two in what we anticipate will be an infinite supply of practical, real-life stories to come about social-purpose enterprises and businesses that begin with a social purpose in mind, take stock of the strengths in their midst and apply them to the "spread of social and economic opportunities to all people."
The Elm Centre having had a few knocks while trying to secure funding kept knocking. And, even now, with affairs in hand the centre is on the lookout for an investor who might be interested in getting involved at even better rates.
That piece of the story is interesting on more than one count. First, the centre continues to be entrepreneurial. Having heard from one bank that financing was not forthcoming for the fear that the bank would face foreclosing on God, the centre kept looking. The fact that the centre is now looking for an even better arrangement suggests they believe such a possibility exists. Read More
