Renjie Butalid » – Community Events

WOOF @ SUPERSKILLZ TORONTO 2010

renjie — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:19:23 +0000

My final edited video of my sister’s dance crew performance in Toronto at the Superskillz 2010 Talent Show, held at the Opera House on March 6, 2010.

My younger sister Loubelle is part of the Western Ontario Organization of Filipinos (WOOF), a student club at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. Loubelle plays the main female lead in the performance. A previous WOOF video that I put together from their performance at the Ontario University Competition for Hip Hop in November 2009, can be found here.

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Myth-conceptions of Dubai & Abu Dhabi

renjie — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:13:42 +0000

My Ignite Waterloo talk on the myth-conceptions of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, which took place at the Waterloo Regional Children’s Museum on March 3, 2010, as part of Global Ignite Week.

Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place
Where the caravan camels roam
Where they cut off your ear
If they don’t like your face
It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home

When the wind’s from the east
And the sun’s from the west
And the sand in the glass is right
Come on down
Stop on by
Hop a carpet and fly
To another Arabian night

Walt Disney’s Aladdin (1992)

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Waterloo Lecture on Social Innovation (full video)

renjie — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:06:34 +0000

This blog post originally appeared on SiG@Waterloo’s blog on February 2, serving as a quick recap to the Waterloo Lecture on Social Innovation. David Yoon and Hilary Abel also have their take on the evening. Feel free to leave other blog post recaps of the Waterloo Lecture in the comments section. That said, the video of the Waterloo Lecture on Social Innovation featuring Adam Kahane is now online and I have re-posted it from the SiG@Waterloo website below.

I am currently reading Adam’s book, “Power & Love: A Theory & Practice of Social Change”, and will post a book review and my thoughts when I am done. My review of his first book, “Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities”, can be found here.

On Wednesday January 27, over 200 people gathered in the packed atrium of the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Ontario, for the Waterloo Lecture on Social Innovation featuring Adam Kahane. A further 150 people were able to join us online for the live webcast of the Waterloo Lecture.

A social innovator, once praised by South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, we were pleased to have Adam Kahane join us to deliver the Waterloo Lecture on Social Innovation and to launch his new book, “Power & Love: A Theory & Practice of Social Change”.

As a partner with Reos Partners, an international organization dedicated to supporting and building capacity for innovative collective action in complex social systems, Adam has worked with a diverse range of colleagues and organizations in more than fifty countries on a variety of challenges all over the world. Some of these challenges include addressing critical developmental issues in the transition from apartheid in South Africa; implementing the peace accords that ended the civil war in Guatemala; reducing child malnutrition in India; unblocking political stalemate in the Philippines; as well as accelerating the shift to a low-carbon economy in Canada.

At the Waterloo Lecture on Social Innovation, Adam drew on his experience with leading multi-stakeholder change processes to offer practical guidance for effectively balancing power and love, two-always present, usually polarized, often undiscussable-drives.

All tweets with the #waterloolecture hashtag can be found here

Photos from the Waterloo Lecture on Social Innovation can be found below.

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Out in the Cold

renjie — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:23:38 +0000

Founded in March 2007 by Nick Petten while an undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo, Out in the Cold is a grassroots, student-run event held every November, where students and community members are invited to spend the night outside on campus, to raise money and awareness of homelessness issues in their local community.

We are continuing the Out in the Cold initiative by sharing a model by which other schools and universities can adapt to their respective campus and local community. www.outinthecold.ca was launched in October 2009 as an online portal to document the growth of this grassroots initiative. It is our goal to provide the tools necessary for people in other schools and universities to organize similar events in order to provide a better understanding of issues surrounding homelessness, poverty and housing stability.

Causes of homelessness include poverty and a lack of affordable housing. Root causes of poverty include low income, unemployment or underemployment, social isolation, racism, low literacy, poor education, and many more. Addressing homelessness is effective social, health, and economic policy.

Learn more about the issues

After three years at the University of Waterloo, the Out in the Cold model was successfully adapted at the University of Toronto campus. In November 2009, Out in the Cold was run simultaneously at both campuses, and was organized by teams of students led by Kaija Saarinen (Waterloo) and Jenna van Draanen (Toronto).

Learn more about Out in the Cold 2009
Out in the Cold in the news

Out in the Cold Timeline

Out in the Cold has raised over $10,000 for organizations tackling the issues of poverty and homelessness in the local community.

March 2007: University of Waterloo

November 2007: University of Waterloo

November 2008: University of Waterloo

November 2009:

University of Waterloo & University of Toronto

www.outinthecold.ca launched

November 2010:

Our goal is to apply this model to schools and universities across Canada. Please contact us if you would like to host Out in the Cold in your local community.

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Out in the Cold at the University of Toronto

renjie — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:37:54 +0000

Out in the Cold 2009

A big THANK YOU to InsideToronto.com for putting together this video of Out in the Cold, held at the University of Toronto on November 20-21, 2009.

Time For Change – December 3rd, 2009 See and download the full gallery on posterous Part...
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Time For Change – December 3rd, 2009

renjie — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:02:04 +0000

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Part silent photo auction, part community involvement, and part celebration night out.

Kristina and Ruby are two recent grads who spent their summers after undergrad interning at 2 different NGO’s in Malawi and Botswana. They are both passionate about social change/media/innovation, photography, and are constantly striving for a better world. For our birthdays, we want to celebrate jointly and stray from the typical “go out and party”, and use this opportunity to bring people together and share our passions.

You are cordially invited to attend our Time for Change. Instead of raising money, we want to raise time. Each of us will be exhibiting photos from our respective experiences in Africa that our guests can bid on. However, instead of bidding with money, they will bid with community service hours for local non-profits.

Our Time for Change Objectives:

To thank all those who supported us financially and emotionally throughout the past year
To share our stories, encounters, gains and pains from the summer
To connect all those who want to be involved in the local community with meaningful volunteering opportunities that match their skills and fit their busy lifestyle.

Please join us at the Hotshots Gallery, 530pm-8pm on December 3rd, 2009. RSVP here.

We hope to see you there!

Ruby Ku | @rubyku | www.facebook.com/ruby.ku

Kristina Lugo | @kristinalugo | www.facebook.com/kristina.lugo

Posted via email from Time For Change

Moment of Profound Social Change Photo courtesy of Toshio on Flickr – The Dance I...
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Ignite Waterloo

renjie — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 13:16:49 +0000

Last Wednesday, we hosted the first-ever Ignite Waterloo at the Waterloo Regional Children’s Museum in downtown Kitchener. It was certainly a great night, and from the numerous tweets, photos and blog posts that emerged following the event, it seems to have gone over well with the community in attendance.

For those of you who missed it, we’ve put together a three-minute video (see above) that I hope captures the spirit of Ignite Waterloo.

A slide deck of all the Ignite Waterloo presentations can be found below.

Ignite! Waterloo

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R4Fashion and OUCH 2009

renjie — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:48:03 +0000

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Following the 3rd Conference on Social Enterprise in Toronto last Friday, I had the sincere pleasure of attending a number of student organized events over the weekend including R4Fashion, a fashion show dedicated to celebrating top and upcoming Canadian fashion designers who view fashion with an added green dimension; Out in the Cold at the University of Toronto, an event designed to raise funds and awareness of homelessness issues in the local community; as well as the Ontario Universities Competition for Hip Hop (OUCH) 2009, an annual hip hop competition showcasing the best of hip hop talent from universities and colleges across Ontario.

The main reason I attended OUCH 2009 this year was because my younger sister, Loubelle, who is in her second year of nursing at the University of Western Ontario, made it to the Western hip hop team to represent her school in the competition. Of course, I played the role of proud big brother and fully supported her at the event!

Congrats to all the winners this year at OUCH 2009, shout outs to the University of Waterloo peeps who placed third in the competition! (McMaster – First place, University of Toronto – Second place)

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Quantum to Cosmos

renjie — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:43:12 +0000

See and download the full gallery on posterous

It’s funny how I was at the ChangeMedium event at MaRS in Toronto yesterday, and today, I find myself face to face with a life-size replica of the Mars Rover at the Physica Phantastica Exhibit in uptown Waterloo, part of the Quantum to Cosmos festival hosted by the Perimeter Institute.

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Myth-conceptions of Dubai & Abu Dhabi My Ignite Waterloo talk on the myth-conceptions of Dubai...
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Ignite Social Innovation

renjie — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:44:22 +0000

I often come across the question “So, what do you do?” when I am at an event and meeting people for the first time, or catching up with old friends from high school or university.

More often than not, I find myself having to explain the work that I do from the very beginning. It usually begins with providing a basic overview of the terms social innovation and social entrepreneurship, both from the Social Innovation Generation perspective, complemented with the emerging definitions of the terms.

I have also heard the argument that there will come a point in time where the word ’social’ will no longer be needed in front of the word ‘entrepreneur’ to define ’social entrepreneur’, as the very definition of ‘entrepreneur’ in itself would have evolved to encompass the ideals and values of a social entrepreneur: an individual focused on social and environmental impact, while maintaining net positive financial returns as well. (Again, this is a very broad definition of social entrepreneurship).

Frances Westley and Nino Antadze also have an interesting perspective on social innovation, social enterprise & social entrepreneurship, in their monograph on social innovation, Making a Difference: Strategies for Scaling Social Innovations for Greater Impact, published by SiG@Waterloo back in March 2009, that helps to put all three terms into context.

Figure 4 explains on which scale the above-defined three concepts introduce innovation. Whereas social entrepreneurship focuses on an individual and social enterprise addresses organizations, social innovation strives to change the way a system operates. Consequently, social entrepreneurship and social enterprise operate within the larger framework of “wider trends of thought and practice” (Westall, 2007, p. 2). Therefore, Leadbeater (2007) suggests, the policy on social enterprise should be developed within the boundaries of a wider strategy on social innovation.

However, we still have a long way to go before the terms social innovation and social entrepreneurship, enters into mainstream vocabulary.

That being said, the following video is certainly a great primer if you are not too familiar with social innovation, or if the field of social change has recently piqued your interest.

Above is my colleague Lisa Torjman from SiG@MaRS, delivering a 5-minute talk on social innovation at Ignite Toronto a couple of months ago. This short video highlights what social innovators are interested in. From convergence and complexity theory, to social-ecological resilience and systems design, Lisa does a great job of condensing the complex elements surrounding social innovation, into the Ignite presentation format of only 20 presentation slides, with only 15 seconds allocated to each slide.

And on that note, make sure to mark your calendars for the first-ever Ignite Waterloo event, set to take place at the Waterloo Region Children’s Museum on November 25, 2009.

If you enjoyed Lisa’s presentation above, you will certainly enjoy the roster of exciting speakers and topics that we have lined up for Ignite Waterloo. The Ignite Waterloo presentation that I am personally looking forward to is Simon Clark’s Hacking the ‘hood – Simple ways to turn a neighborhood into a community.

Have you ever wanted to live in a really great neighborhood? One where everybody knows each other, where you can’t walk down the street without meeting fifteen people you know? You could move to such a place, but why not create it where you already live? Learn some simple tricks to turn your neighborhood into a community to cherish.

About Ignite Waterloo

Ignite Waterloo captures the best of Waterloo Region’s geek culture in a series of five-minute speed presentations on topics ranging from The Best Way to Buy a Car to Hacking Chocolate. Imagine that you’re on stage in front of an audience of hundreds of people, doing a five-minute presentation using a slide deck that auto-forwards every 15 seconds, whether you’re ready or not. What would you do? What would you say? Could you stand the pressure?

Posted via email from Renjie Butalid

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