We asked: How are you going to use this experience in Nova Scotia? 

We love the enthusiasm of our respondents! See below for their

In so many ways! It has alerted me to a great deal of partners, resources, legislation, etc. that may have relevance in my work in Nova Scotia. I know I have a network of contacts that I can call if I have questions and I have already connected people I met at the conference with social enterprises back at home. As a young person who is committed in building a career in this sector, the intangible impact of seeing the scale of what is possible will continue to guide me in my professional role.

Our enterprise’s success is the province’s success.  Social enterprise is also a tool that can be used to develop rural economies.

“1) Renew my research into policy around finance and land ownership, so that I can better understand how to execute someone else’s good ideas here in NS.

2) The global networks developed will prove invaluable, especially where the SE sector remains only nascent here in Canada.”

I will look for ways to engage Prescott with other like-minded groups located within Nova Scotia. I believe we have an opportunity to combine effort with others who might not serve the same population. While Prescott serves people who have an intellectual disability I envision future partnership with school aged children and seniors; all ideas that were gained while attending the SEWF 2018.

QASL is currently pursuing expansion opportunities that will include a new/repurposed facility for our social enterprises.  We will be strategically evaluating new business opportunities (many ideas that came from the forum) that will help us become more sustainable in addition to offering more opportunity for social and economic inclusion to the people we serve.  We will be using the knowledge gained from listening to many successful social enterprises and key points identified by sector experts as part of our evaluation. Sharing information and lessons learned from the SEWF is top priority for me and my organization.

Being part of a thriving and growing sector, I want to do what I can to support that growth.

I plan to approach my work as a consultant through a lens of looking for the ways that social enterprises are enriching and bringing prosperity to their neighbourhoods, towns, and rural areas.

Knowing what the global network of SE’s looks like and being able to pull case studies and examples of other organizations doing similar work to what we’re doing in NS is a huge resource to me. I am big on researching and understanding the history of things before I dive into them and try to do them, so being connected to so many different stories was a major help. I also thought the experience helped strengthen the relationships of all the Nova Scotians that were in attendance.

Scottish youth are taught about social entrepreneurship in elementary school, which is a lesson we all should learn from. We were inspired to start our very own youth social entrepreneurship program called FUN-Raisers, which is set to start on November 8, 2018. This way youth in our community can learn about entrepreneurship and how they can play a role in the fixing the social issues they care about.

We will continue to partner with our community; education is key. We will bring the information and ideas presented from the conference back to our organisation to explore for possible future activities.