In my second year of university, I watched a documentary called The True Cost in a lecture and it brought me to tears. This film was all about the social and environmental harms caused by the fast fashion industry, and watching it was both an eye-opening and heart-breaking realization for […]
Entrepreneurs
The House that Becky Built
Educational Video Companion: Indigenous Entrepreneurship and Housing Security Environatives Training Initiative
Seeds of Change
Humankind is an inherently social species. Not only do positive relationships reduce stress and feelings of loneliness, but they also result in long-term happiness and good health. A sense of belonging plays an important part in this social phenomenon.
Census of Community – Sources
Public opinion: – GPC 2015 – http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/results-2015/ – e-recycling – http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=6541 – GMO ban – http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=7006
‘I don’t know’ is no excuse
Why vote? A simple question launched University of Waterloo student, Mavis Chan to set out changing the apathetic attitude carried by her peers. Taking advantage of the entrepreneurial co-op program at the university, Chan began to develop whyVOTE, an app that helps users understand which parties their goals align with […]
Building Community at the Working Centre
IN 1982, Joe and Stephanie Mancini settled in Kitchener, Ontario, after a volunteer stint in Tanzania. The small city was faced with crippling unemployment as plant closings across North America wiped out many of the jobs that had supported thriving local economies. The young couple responded strongly to the disrupted […]
Mobilizing the Public to Move Beyond Crisis
An estimated 400,000 people showed their solidarity and support for climate action in New York City at what is now known as the largest climate march in history – and that doesn’t include the 2,646 solidarity events held in over 160 countries around the world.
Creating a Values-Driven Career
We spend most of our lives at work—where levels of disengagement are at an all-time high, according to the Conference Board of Canada. This is bad for our economy, since disengaged workers are less productive. It’s also bad for workers and their families, who live the daily physical and mental […]
Pushing Fashion Sustainability Forward
THE FASHION INDUSTRY has a serious environmental footprint. Cotton, one of the most popular fabrics in the world, uses a significant amount of pesticides, while many textile preservatives and disposal methods cause pollution. Animals are exploited in order to help generate a profit, and many workers are placed in extremely harsh […]
Change Agents
At first it can be tricky to pin down what Sustainable Waterloo Region does. That’s not to say the volunteer-fuelled non-profit doesn’t share its own success story well. It’s that SWR’s influence is naturally understated, an unseen support beam to the goals and achievements of other businesses trying to cut […]