WLU Global Citizenship Conference January 2010

I was invited to present a workshop on social innovation/social change this past weekend at the Wilfrid Laurier University Global Citizenship Conference 2010, where past keynote speakers have included Stephen Lewis and Romeo Dallaire. This year’s keynote speaker featured Andrea Smith, professor in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside, and a nominee for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

My workshop at the WLU GCC was largely based on the workshop that I developed and delivered in July 2009, entitled Opportunities to Create Social Change, building on the work of Frances Westley and Brenda Zimmerman and their work on complexity and resilience theory. Of course, I tailored it to fit the context of the conference, discussing ways the individual person can adopt a complexity and resilience lens, as well as use the adaptability cycle in a practical manner, to better understand the process of social innovation, or transformative social change.

After I posted a recap and shared the slides from my workshop on my blog last summer, I got a response almost immediately from Melissa Richer, Executive Director of the Ayllu Initiative in Brazil (whom I had previously connected with on Twitter), clearly articulating why young people want to change the world, not out of ‘youthful idealism’, but rather, as an imperative need to survive in a world faced with intractable and increasingly complex social problems.

If you haven’t read Melissa’s guest blog post yet, I would recommend that you read it here.

And finally, I would like to thank the organizers of the WLU Global Citizenship Conference 2010 for the invitation to present my workshop and for putting on a great event.

I would also like to highlight an organization called NationWares, a social enterprise based in the Waterloo Region founded by Amie Sider, an undergrad student at Wilfrid Laurier University, that promotes the pillars of sustainability through micro-enterprise and fair trade.

Thank you for the amazing speaker gifts!