Employ to Empower, whose mission is to reduce stigma in the community for Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside residents, hopes to support its 100th DTES resident through its Entrepreneurship Program this year.
Deirdre Pinnock (an entrepreneur), Scott Shaw (Board of Director member), and Christina Wong (Executive Director of Employ To Empower)
Employ to Empower Celebrates 4 Years
Employ to Empower (ETE) is a registered charity, launched in 2018, that provides residents in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside with access to development and entrepreneurial resources, such as affordable microloans and business mentorship, to have long-term positive impact on their personal and economic well being. ETE also actively advocates for positive social change in the DTES community.
As a homegrown charity set to enter its fourth year in the community, Employ to Empower — who also organizes the annual Vancouver Street Store — has already supported 32 entrepreneurs since launching, and is preparing for nearly 80 more cohorts this coming year.
Employ to Empower’s annual DTES Street Store
The organization’s Development Program is the first touchpoint for empowering individuals facing social and economic barriers, with the course providing basic business fundamentals to get applicants started on their entrepreneurial journey.
Through the first three years, nearly 90% of cohorts who completed the Development Program have graduated into the Entrepreneurship Program — where they are provided with specialized and on-demand mentorship.
“Coming from all backgrounds and with imaginative and practical ideas, the entrepreneurs at Employ to Empower are visionaries who want to lift themselves up,” said Christina Wong, Executive Director of Employ To Empower. “As more people learn about this program and hear success stories, we’re seeing such a growing demand for entrepreneurship development.”
Entrepreneurs have seen steady personal and professional growth over the past year, including Julie Melanie Ruiz-Tagle, the founder of Enviro Bag Evolution. Out of necessity as a mobility scooter user, Ruiz-Tagle handcrafted a storage bag to attach to her mobility devices — in order to have her wallet and water bottle readily available.
After participating in the Development Program in Spring 2021, Ruiz-Tagle was matched with an Employ to Empower mentor, meeting each week for eight months to explore ways to take her business and entrepreneurial savviness to the next level. Now at age 66, her venture, Enviro Bag Evolution, provides storage products made from recycled fabrics to fit scooters, wheelchairs, and walkers.
In addition to having her bags sold on her website, on the Employ to Empower ‘Change Market’ e-commerce site, and on Facebook Marketplace, Ruiz-Tagle is searching for sales representatives for her handcrafted bags.
“There are many more entrepreneurs in our program who have seen tremendous growth in self-esteem,” said Karen Flynn, Head of Entrepreneurship Program at Employ to Empower. “They are able to pitch their business ideas confidently and share in peer gatherings hosted each month to further build their skills in networking.”
Since launching in 2018, Employ to Empower has received multiple accolades, including the Top Idea Prize awarded by Coast Capital Savings SFU Venture Connection in 2018; the Top Small Business awarded by Coast Capital Savings & SFU Venture Connection in 2019; and was selected as a Top-10 recipient for the Canada She’s Next VISA grant.
Employ to Empower’s Cardboard Project
Wong was also named a finalist nominee for the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award in 2020, and a Top 50 Change-Makers in Canada as nominated by the Globe and Mail. You can read a profile of Wong and Employ to Empower in the July 2021 issue of Megaphone Magazine.
This Women’s Day you can get moving and have fun while supporting three great local causes when you join the fourth annual Workout for Women’s Day in Vancouver.
Over 40 instructors will lead over 40 sessions in person and over Zoom from March 1-8, 2022.
Workout for Women’s Day in Vancouver
Workout for Women’s Day is a coming together of local trainers and fitness studios around International Women’s Day (March 8th) to offer classes for charities that support all girls and women.
Here’s how it works:
Donate to the cause of your choice (consider what you’d spend on a drop-in class, or donate what you can). The three beneficiaries this year are Battered Women’s Support Services, Vancouver Women’s Health Collective, and WISH Drop-In Centre Society.
Check the daily schedule and find the workouts and classes you’d like to participate in. They have everything from Power Step to Barre Fusion, HIIT, Zumba, Strength Training, Bliss Yoga Flow, Circus Bodies, Retro Dance Cardio, Kickboxing, Bollywood Dance Party, and many more.
Register for your class(es) and you’re good to go!
The goals of the campaign are to provide a space where all feel welcome and empowered to move in their own way, unite, support and share local movement instructors. Organizers want to raise awareness for organizations and causes that support all self-identifying girls and women, and gender expansive people, in the hopes of creating greater community connections now and in the future, and promote inclusion, diversity and equity in movement settings.
The three charities have identified areas of their programming where help is critically needed. In 2021, the campaign raised $33,447, bringing the initiative’s fundraising total to $61,447. Organizers are hoping that number is even higher this year.
After months of anticipation, Megaphone has released episode one of the Voices of the Street podcast today — its first foray into audio storytelling by people with lived experiences of poverty, substance use and incarceration. Tune in as new episodes are released over the next six weeks.
Voices of the Streets Podcast
Four Megaphone storytellers — Nicolas Leech-Crier, Julie Chapman, Angel Gates and Yvonne Mark — were given a prompt: explore the writing and themes from the 2021 edition of Voices of the Street that resonate with you to create an original podcast. They met throughout the summer of 2021 with podcasting mentor Helena Krobath and a slew of talented guest mentors to play with the dimensions of storytelling unique to podcasts.
“I’ve worked in a lot of collaborative processes before, because I love the energy of creativity flowing from different directions to create a single moment, and this was one of those for sure…except this time I got to be the star AND the host! It was a really unique and genuinely Megaphone experience for me and, I hope, for our listening audience! Enjoy!”- Nicolas Leech-Crier, Participant in the Voices of the Street Podcast Mentorship
Hosts: Yvonne Mark, Nicolas Crier, Julie Chapman, Angel Gates
The group learned about audio storyboarding, vocal techniques, interviewing, audio recording, theme music and sound effects, all while scripting and producing their original podcasts.
These unique stories are now ready to share with the public. With humour, curiosity, care and thoughtfulness, episodes from this series move from intergenerational trauma and family healing, to navigating the criminal justice system as an Indigenous person, to coming to understand yourself better through the act of writing.
You can listen to the first episode now to and learn more from the storytellers who have drawn on the wisdom of their lived experience and leaned into experimenting with audio storytelling.
The Family Day long weekend is here and with more events and attractions opening up the list of things to do around Metro Vancouver is seemingly endless! Just in case you wanted a hand-picked, curated, one-stop list of all of those awesome, fun things, I have it right here!
mugshare, a relatively new program in Vancouver, promotes the use of reusable coffee cups. Forget your own reusable cup? They’ve got you covered at over a dozen locations around the city.
Photo courtesy of mugshare
mugshare Helps You Say Goodbye to Cup Fees and Waste
“As plastic pollution continues to grow, cutting back on single-use food items, like polycoated coffee cups, and advancing circular solutions is more critical than ever,” says Melanie Chanona, director and co-founder of mugshare. “Before the COVID-19 pandemic, we were making progress, but lack of clarity around health and safety concerns stalled the momentum, and with added waste from disposable masks and gloves, the plastic crisis has only worsened.”
Did you know?
Vancouverites throw out up to 2.6 million single-use cups every week, costing the city $2.5 million annually to collect.
Single-use cups make up 22% of all city litter, ending up in the streets, in the landfill, and in our oceans.
Over 80% of Vancouverites think reducing single-use items is important, and that quick-serve restaurants or cafes should provide reusable options.
mugshare is a social impact program that provides a safe, reusable alternative to single-use cups through a convenient deposit-return system. The born-in-Vancouver business was created by a group of UBC students in 2016 in an effort to shift the norm on single-use waste, without putting the burden of responsibility on individuals. During the pandemic, they joined forces with CUPPY, another mug-sharing pioneer who shared the same values as mugshare, to collaboratively grow the reusable movement in British Columbia.
“We’re building an incredible community of partners and mugsharers in Vancouver and beyond,” says Chanona. “Together, we’re taking a systems change approach to decrease reliance on single-use cups and help address the harm created by linear ‘make-take-waste’ models. We believe reducing barriers to participation is key to making this shift, so we prioritized simplicity and ease of use when designing the program.”
There are three easy steps to become a mugsharer:
Order a drink at any mugshare partner location and ask for a mugshare mug. Pay a $5 refundable deposit.
Enjoy your drink there, or take it to go.
Whenever convenient, return your mug at any mugshare location and be reimbursed for your $5 deposit.
mugshare’s intent is to keep the program as accessible as possible — no app is required to become a mugsharer, so a smartphone is not a prerequisite. mugshare partners and users will also avoid the new $0.25 fee to be charged for all single-use disposable cups in Vancouver that began January 1, 2022, and by joining now, they’ll establish a reusable mug habit before it’s enforced. Businesses who partner with mugshare will also be exempt from the extra administrative work of reporting the number of single-use cups distributed to their customers while filing their 2023 business license renewal with the City of Vancouver.
mugsharers can feel confident knowing their health and safety is a top priority: the reusable mugs are sanitized after every use, to the same standards as dine-in dishware. mugshare provides training to business partners on sanitization standards as well as guidance from public health officials that supports the use of reusable containers.
The quickly-growing list of mugshare partners already includes coffee luminaries like Giovane Caffè, Di Beppe, and Caffè Super Veloce in downtown Vancouver, select JJ Bean locations, DALINA in Chinatown and Fairview, Chickpea on Main Street, Continental Coffee House on Main Street and Commercial Drive, Boulevard and Doughgirls on UBC campus, and even Globe Cafe and Tapas Bar at Big White Ski Resort near Kelowna.
