March 17, 2010 ESSENCE
EXCERPT: Bridging the gap: Alternative finance
models for environmental and social wellbeing
POMME ARROS,
MANUELLE CHANOINE, JEREMY
KIROUAC
AND COURTNEY ROBINSON
Social businesses are emerging as a power-
ful means to reduce Canada’s ecological
footprint. Where the mainstream environ-
mental movement often conflicts with Ca-
nadian citizens’ basic economic interests,
social businesses provide services that cre-
ate social, environmental and economic
betterment.
First Power Canada is a social busi-
ness that helps empower First Nations
communities in becoming fossil fuel
independent while simultaneously cre-
ating opportunities for employment
and cultural revival. While First Power
and other social businesses are helping
Canada move towards a more sustain-
able economy, they lack adequate access
to financial resources.
We offer development banking and
Slow Money as two approaches to pro-
mote a new kind of investment that
strives for social and environmental bet-
terment by funding social businesses.
While development banking provides
a practical approach that can be imple-
mented by the Canadian government,
Slow Money is an approach that can
change the priorities of the investment
community.
Approach 2: Slow Money
Thus far, the environmental movement
has largely committed to a government
regulatory approach which provides little
empowerment and little motivation for
citizens to participate. Instead, what
Got Skills? Reclaiming a Multiskilled Lifestyle
JULIE PISANI
“What career are you going to pursue after
you graduate?” This is probably the most
common question we are confronted with
as university students. It’s a more specific
version of a question we’ve been asked
since childhood: “what do you want to
be when you grow up?”
First, I wanted to be a detective. Next,
an astronaut. Then, a professional hockey
player. The older I got, the less sure I be-
came. Choosing a single vocation started
to seem too restricting, like backing my-
self into a corner. The implications of
pursuing a single profession and skills
specialization had me feeling uneasy.
In the university system, we are re-
quired to narrow our field of interest to
a faculty, a degree program, a major. This
persistent focusing of our skills results in
highly trained individuals who are experts
in a certain professional area, and though
their abilities in that specific realm run
deep, they lack the breadth (or diver-
sity) required for resilience in the face of
changing, unstable economic or environ-
mental conditions.
It was liberating when finally the an-
swer dawned on me. There is not just one
career I want to strive for, rather, my goal
is to gain skills in many areas; I want to
be able sustain myself and contribute to
my community.
For me it was a revelation, but skill
based self-sufficiency is not a new idea.
We’ve only been removed from this real-
ity for the past few generations.
My great-grandmother would find it
strange that it “dawned on me” to learn
9
society needs is the rise of a new con-
sciousness (Speth, 2008). This implies a
significant cultural change and a reorien-
tation of what society values and prizes
most highly.
Slow Money is an emerging movement
which provides a perfect example of the
kind of change envisioned in the new
consciousness. This movement addresses
the present distance between the envi-
ronmental movement and the needs of
“
The idea of Slow
Money, developed
by Woody Tasch, is
derived from the
International Slow
Food Movement
founded by the activist
Carlo Petrini
“ date, the potential for returns that im-
Canadian citizens, and offers a profound
revelation on how to slow down the cur-
rent speed of capital flow and the forces
of high-speed returns.
The idea of Slow Money, developed by
Woody Tasch, is derived from the Inter-
national Slow Food Movement founded
by the activist Carlo Petrini which uses
food as a vehicle to reconnect people to
their natural communities. This move-
ment embodies a new vision of capital-
ism that knows its limits, respects nature,
and acts in service of man.
In relation to speed, Petrini compares
the new tempo to the rate of human
metabolism, one that is placid and slow
(Colpaart, 2007). The movement there-
fore advocates a lifestyle in which people
to preserve food or make my own cloth-
ing. For her, it was not a choice but a
necessity – if she didn’t do it no one else
would.
As a kid growing up in the ’90s in a
middle class Canadian community, I was
never prompted to learn how to sew, how
to grow and can food or how to build
shelter.
Reflecting on my peers and my genera-
tion, many of us do not have the skills
to take care of our basic needs. We rely
on outside sources – developers and con-
tractors to build our houses, factories or
sweatshops to make our clothing and
agri-businesses to provide our food. The
fact that we are largely dependent on oth-
ers, often who are far away and unknown
to us, to supply us with our basic material
needs, is all too often taken for granted
and unacknowledged.
Our individual resilience is being put
to the test by the current economic un-
predictability, for example. Stats Canada
reported that 213,000 jobs have been lost
since October. My mother is part of this
statistic. She worked as a production edi-
tor for a corporate educational publish-
ing house that decided to outsource their
work to cheaper employees in India.
If we as individuals are so reliant on our
single professions as our source of income
and survival, what happens when that job
no longer exists? What happens when the
people we depend on for food and shelter
are no longer capable of providing for us
– if their businesses fold or if their ma-
terials run out or if their means of trans-
porting goods to us fail?
My solution is what I like to think of as
take the time to savour food, and take
pleasure in eating locally-sourced prod-
ucts, rejecting large-scale farming and
the hectic way of eating and living that
damages our bodies and the world (Gut-
nick, 2009).
Similarly, the Slow Money movement
advocates a society where investors value
slow, rather than fast, returns to invest-
ments which promote social and envi-
ronmental wellbeing.
The first component of Slow Money
refers to the creation of capital flows to
specifically support small-scale, diversi-
fied, local and organic food production.
Secondly, the Slow Money concept ad-
dresses the critical effects of the speed of
capitalism above and beyond the food
system. Within the capitalist framework,
lenders and investors conduct business
on the basis of fast and high returns: to
prove social and environmental condi-
tions has gone largely unnoticed.
Tasch (2008) states that the first stages
of a more profound fiduciary realign-
ment include socially-responsible invest-
ing, mission-related and program-related
investing by foundations, venture phi-
lanthropy, social entrepreneurship and
local economies.
Though some of these initiatives remain
incremental and laden with ambiguity,
“others are indicators of more fundamen-
tal, tectonic shifts along the boundaries of
for-profit and non-profit, shareholder and
stakeholder, global investor and local citi-
zen. This process of economic and cultural
transformation calls for a new prudence, a
new urgency [and] a new vision of capital
markets designed to usher in the age of
restorative economics” (p. 6-7).
CANNING USED TO BE A COMMON SKILL
a quiver of skills. Currently I’m complet-
ing a degree in creative writing, which I
see as a skill that fulfills the basic human
need to express oneself and communicate
with others. When I complete my degree,
I will continue to broaden my skill base
rather than depend on that one skill of
writing as my sole means of bringing din-
ner home.
I will continue to develop skills in
PHOTO BY JULIA BENNETT
The Slow Money movement advocates their money where their values are while
for a new way of thinking which values not entirely dismissing the fact that busi-
the kind of opportunities promoted by nesses need profit to stay competitive.
social businesses. Businesses are in a great Therefore, if investors start practic-
position to accelerate the transition away ing the principles of the Slow Money
from traditional capitalism by creating
a new image
movement, they will see the value in
investing in social
for themselves:
instead of focus-
ing on profit,
“ The incentive is to be
an agent of change,
businesses like First
Power Canada. As
the movement grows,
they can create to place value on increased competi-
returns in the new symbols and to tion between social
form of social
redefine wealth in businesses will pro-
betterment. non-monetary terms vide more incentive
The incentive
is to be an agent
of change, to place value on new symbols
“
and compete.
for other businesses
to enter the market
and to redefine wealth in non-monetary Consequently, investors will be com-
terms (Yunus, 2007). Businesses that op- pelled to compete amongst themselves,
erate with a Slow Money mindset have resulting in social betterment on a larger
the power to create a place in the mar- scale.
ket for assets like poverty alleviation and
environmental awareness. Tasch believes To read the full version and bibliography
that we must put the ‘share’ back into of this paper, visit: web.uvic.ca/~essa/
the concept of the shareholder.
Investors have the opportunity to put
PHOTO BY MILA CZEMERYS
growing and preserving foods. I want to to provide my own basic needs, and in
acquire the skill of natural building with turn am capable of providing for others
materials like cob, to learn how to frame around me. On top of that, I would have
a house out of timber, and how to split the option to trade my skills (knitting,
cedar shakes for shingles. And pursue the house-framing, food-growing) for money
art of making and mending clothes. to positively interact in this currency-
Accumulating these diverse abilities based economic system.
puts me in direct control of my wellbe- A multi-skilled individual is a resilient
ing. part of the greater whole, and that is what
In my vision of the future, I am able I want to be.