#wearechimp

Fran de la Luna came to Canada in 2001 from Singapore. And while they loved the city and decided to stay, they quickly became aware of the social isolation that is so often prevalent in Vancouver due to the weather and cultural attitudes. Instead of staying inside and moping like so many Vancouverites, Fran elected to do something about it by helping some of the people most vulnerable to exclusion from the community. Fran is now a community connector at Building Caring Communities, a group dedicated to helping people with disabilities to interact with and benefit from the community. We talked to Fran about experimentation, chance encounters, and pinball.

On the program: Building Caring Communities is an experimental group where we're doing a lot of social experiments to address social isolation and resiliency for folks with disabilities, particularly folks with developmental disabilities or cognitive disabilities.

On startup: The initiative came together as a result of collaboration of four disability agencies: posAbilities, the Burnaby Association for Community Inclusion, the Simon Fraser Society for Community Living, and Inclusion Powell River. The four agencies decided to tackle the question of what does it mean for folks with disabilities to live a meaningful life in the community?

On service: A lot of folks, after institutionalization ended, and they came out from the hospitals, they were spread out throughout Vancouver. There was a really big need to provide services for them. This could be anything from needing someone to come to your house and cook for you, or needing someone to take you to places. It's very service-based.

The four agencies realized that they were doing something that's not really great for folks with disabilities, because they are essentially providing them with good service but they're also isolating them from the community. There are people who have been living in their homes for 20 years and barely even know their neighbours. They don't have any interaction with the outside world. They don't have friends. Their life consists of schedules, contracts, agreements, reviews. A lot of staff are often time telling them what to do. But they don't really get the rich community experience.

On relationships: We're not trying to provide a service. We are trying to spend a lot of time with folks with disabilities to understand their lives. To understand what is it exactly that they're doing. What kind of lives they are living. And so where can we come in to address social isolation with them. We are actively taking a collaborative approach. We are always going to our folks and finding out what their interests are. What their passions are. What their gifts are. And that really started us out.

On clients: Everyone is different. For example, I'm working with five different individuals now and they each have different needs. It could be spending an hour or two with them a week. We’ll go for neighbourhood walks and do something called asset mapping, essentially asking questions like, “Where are places you have found to be welcoming and inclusive? What do you consider as asset in this neighbourhood that you live in?" We do a lot of creative stuff because all the connectors [BCC staff] come from different backgrounds. Some of us have creative backgrounds. And then we'll do a lot of research in terms of how they interact with people. We go right down into it, really getting to know the people. We call it the extended first date. It could take six months, it could take three months, it could take a year. But whatever it takes for us to know this person so that we can bring them out into the community and then include it into their lives.

On Kudoz: We interface with Kudoz all the time. We have participants who go to Kudoz and we will go with them. Kudoz is a really great platform for us to introduce our participants who have very limited experiences to open up so that they can try different things. And through that experience with Kudoz we can connect. Oftentimes we find that when a participant's experience opens up, it changes their life pretty drastically.

On success: There's a lady who is in her 60's. She's been deemed by people who support her to be stubborn. She never wants to leave the house and she will never wake up early in the morning. We started working with her and we started understanding her life a little bit better. We know that she's afraid to meet people, so trying to plan to meet people is tough. So we changed the environment and said okay, what if we accidentally bump into people, even though we're trying to plan it a little bit. And we found that she opened up to that. She had no problems meeting people when you bumped into them. So that was a really interesting discovery for us to find out. She showed us an entirely different part of herself because we changed the way we're approaching it. Some of the barriers are coming down. This is going against everything people who know her are saying; no, she's stubborn, won't wake up, won't come out of the house. But she's proving all of them wrong and showing us that actually there is capacity to do it all.

On the tools of the trade: We use our individual backgrounds as connectors. We look at what's currently happening in the disability sector. We also look at tons of research papers. So far we've done research on things like friendship, motivation, resilience, trust and courage. We've gone through all these research papers on what we call determinacy of human resilience or human interaction. And then we just pull these theories out. We'll go to our board and we'll use something called human-centred design thinking and we'll try to work on some ideas that we have. A lot of time the ideas will come from either our own personal experiences or simply by saying, okay this is what's been done, lets try something else.

I bring a lot of the queer stuff in as well. I'm currently working with someone who is queer. We're doing the angle of what does it mean to be a queer person with a disability trying to tap into Vancouver's gay community.

On inclusion: Inclusion is not simply just an attitude, it really is about work. Inclusion is about spending time with someone to understand how they connect, how they express themselves, what their beliefs are and where we can find bridges around that. And having the patience to do that.

On changing attitudes: I stopped looking at folks with disabilities as folks with disabilities. I started looking at them as people. Very often times I've been put into my place but virtue of how awesome folks with disabilities are. They can do things that I cannot do. They can think about things that I cannot think. I have someone who I'm working with who plays heavy metal on the piano no problem. You throw him any heavy metal song, he will play it on the piano like nobody's business. Another guy that I work with, he's the Canadian pinball champion. He has a fan club. I was like, this is blowing my mind. We don't really have a normal society. We just have people. Different types of people, awesome people doing amazing stuff. And why they are labeled with a disability is beyond me. Sooner or later we're all going to be disabled because we're going to grow old. I’m going to need someone to come clean my house. I'm going to maybe need help to pee. We're all going down that road eventually.

On what you can do: My simplest answer will always be to go find someone and spend time with them if you can. There are really great videos. There are really great books. You can volunteer. Kudoz is a good example, where you can be a host so you get at least a little bit of a glimpse of what interacting with someone with disabilities is.

A few days ago we came across a post from Taylor Roades in a Facebook group. It’s a compelling look at the fear, anxiety, and hope felt by people around the world in a new era of political uncertainty. As a wedding photographer, Taylor is an observer with a special perspective on love, diversity, and what it means for cultures to connect. As a small business owner, she’s a sterling example of someone who stands up for her convictions, even in the face of potential backlash. We talked to Taylor about showcasing love, feeling helpless, and taking action in a country that embraces diversity.

On education: I didn't go to school for photography. I went to school for business and that really wasn't for me. I was getting into photography at the time and I thought, "I'm just going to take a year off and see", and I went traveling. I spent 6 months in Southeast Asia on that trip. I got more into photography, and when I got back from that trip, I was just going to try and see if I could make the photography thing work. If not, I was going to go back to school. I just never went back to school.

On helping hands: I caught a few different breaks. When I was still in school, I got a small grant from the Ontario Small Business Association. That gave me enough, with my own savings, to buy a decent camera, which I never would have been able to afford as a student otherwise. Then they also paired me with a mentor, someone who had been running a business in the area for years, so I got paired with a real estate agent. She was just so awesome and had such good advice and is still a resource that I go back to if I ever have questions.

On subject matter: I shot weddings in the Toronto area for three years, and I still shoot a few every year back there. Then I moved to Victoria and then Vancouver. I just wanted to shoot landscapes and scenery, and be in the mountains every weekend and be outdoors.

On diversity: Living in Toronto is so multicultural. I grew up where, as a white person, I was a minority in my public school, and we had anti-racism talks as children. My best friend lived down the street in the same sort of suburban, cookie-cutter house as I did, but there were 15 people from Pakistan in the same house that my nuclear family of five lived in. Being exposed to that at a really young age and having friends from all over the world in Toronto, you go out for Vietnamese on one night, and then you go to your friend's house and they serve you Indian, even though they were born in the Congo. They immigrated to South Africa, and then were refugees to Canada. To go and have dinner at their house, you're talking about politics but also anything else that you would talk about as a Canadian. It just goes to show that you can be friends with anyone.

On experience: Because of my travel background and part of my travel portfolio was people from all over, I feel that's why I get so many multicultural weddings and a lot of mixed weddings. I've shot a Jewish-Thai wedding. It had these Thai dancers dressed in formal dress doing the Hora. But it's celebrated. This year I did a Korean-Canadian wedding and the mother of the groom, who was Canadian, was wearing a hanbok. That mix happens all the time, it’s so cool. I get to see a part of where you're from, and it's such a good thing.

On wedding photos: I know all those people personally. I was there on a big day for them, which is sort of anthropological in that you see all their family and all their friends, and all the people that make up who they are. Then I have a personal connection with them, so it was hard for me to pull those photos out of context and talk about diversity as a whole. I didn't shoot those trying to shoot diversity. I shot those to save memories for people to show their kids one day what they looked like when they were 28. I think that in showing weddings, even if you don't agree with me, I’m showing people this is actually what it is like. This is contemporary, this is now.

On understanding: Within my weddings, I am participating pretty actively with other cultures. I've seen so many other traditions and especially when it's a new tradition, I definitely ask questions. I feel very comfortable, and people hire me for the way I see moments, so the more open they are, the more I can see them.

On differing opinions: My family is kind of conservative, and I get so angry when they're like, "Oh but you can't have Christmas trees in school any more.” They're not taking away your Christmas trees, they're giving you the opportunity to learn more.

On politics: I'm in this state of dread, I'm scared about what might possibly happen in Canada. What trickles over the border. I surround myself here, in Vancouver, with other like-minded people. Then I quickly go back to Toronto to visit my family, and I'm smacked in the face with people who don't actually think like me. I come from them, I still love them, but you kind of forget.

On taking action: I've been calling my MP's, I've been trying to be as active as I ever have been. It kind of feels like screaming into an empty room. When Trudeau said we were going to take in 25,000 refugees last year, my roommate and I had a small space in Mount Pleasant, but we talked about if we could have someone come live with us for up to six months. We went to the meetings in Vancouver, which was super heartening. They were turning people away at the door; there were 5,000 people that came out who had accommodation that they wanted to give, or volunteer their time in some way. We called them to follow up a bunch of times, and I'm sure they were overloaded with people, but we pretty much never heard back. That's hard. We want to do something, we're here, we're standing ready to help and then just...you're still useless.

On her Facebook post: Do I feel better or worse after writing it? I don't know. I feel better, I guess. Because at least my views are known. And where I stand. I put it publicly on my wedding website as well, for my business. Anyone who potentially wants to hire me will see that. For me there's right and wrong. I think businesses in our capitalist society actually have a lot of power.

On Donald Trump: I just don't understand how he can know nothing about world politics. I don't think I'm that special. My family is normal, I grew up in the suburbs and I know so much more about world politics. He's the President of the United States. He should know more than I do about world politics.

On goals: I think within my work, my business, [the goal is] to continue to showcase diversity in a positive light. That's something that I can do, and to personally be as politically active as possible. To continue to talk to my friends from all different places with a lot of different perspectives.

Elaine Leung is a marine biologist with a lengthy résumè featuring research positions in exotic locales like Alaska, Hawaii, and Antarctica. But after 15 years working with all kinds of marine life and relatively little conservation action from world governments, Dr. Leung is trying a different strategy - kids. She founded Sea Smart, an organization that provides a variety of programs to kids in Vancouver featuring marine conservation. From beach walks to classroom discovery, Elaine does an incredible job of showing the next generation how important our oceans are to the health of the planet. We talked to Elaine about ocean noise, fish, and teaching kids to care.

On history: I've always been a very curious person, and even now, I'm going constantly, asking questions about everything. I guess what it came down to was I always loved the ocean when I was growing up. It never actually occurred to me to be a marine biologist, because it's one of those dream jobs that doesn't really exist, right? It's only something you see in movies, and people studying dolphins. Then, for my first real job out of high school, I was only 20, I got a job studying sea lions for UBC. I fell in love with marine biology and never looked back.

On changing course: As someone who's been working with endangered species for over 15 years now, over 30 of the species that I've worked with or interacted with will go extinct within my lifetime. The thing is, I can't quit. If we all quit, then who's going to be doing this? Who's going to fight for our environment? After all this work, trying to save all those species, and realizing it hasn’t amounted to any conservation actions, I needed to change course. I believe so strongly in the power of individual action to create positive change. That's the whole idea behind Sea Smart, is that every little action counts and together we can do so much more.

On Sea Smart: Our mission is to get kids excited about our oceans and empower them to be environmental champions. We all know that our youth are our hope for the future and planet, but they're getting increasingly disconnected from nature, and more and more attached to their screens, their tablets, their phones, their computers. It's a big problem, because when kids lose that connection with nature, they start caring less about it. They don't really care about taking action to protect it, so the whole idea behind Sea Smart is that we bring our oceans to you in the classroom, so that even if you don't live right by the ocean, you can learn about the ocean. You can learn about how amazing it is.

On strategies: We don't just teach kids about ocean problems. We get them to actively brainstorm solutions and to identify actions they can take to help. It doesn't matter if you're in kindergarten, grade 7, or grade 12, there's something that you can do to help, and hopefully they take this knowledge home and they share it with their parents.

On fun: We try to turn everything into a game or really fun activity. For instance, underwater noise, we're trying these really innovative teaching techniques to get the kids to experience firsthand what it's like to be a marine animal growing up, or living in the ocean that's surrounded by all these threats. We taught the kids about echolocation, how a lot of marine animals use sound and echoes to find their prey and each other. We blindfolded the kids and we had fish on the floor. We had other kids tell them where all the fish was, but then we had other kids who were boats, and making lots of boat noise. The kids could really experience that when you're relying on sound to find your prey, how difficult that is in an ocean of increasingly loud noises.

On kids: I've been working as a marine biologists for over 15 years now, all around the world, for different governments, universities, NGOs, and even the mining and gas industries. Mainly working with adults on conservation issues. Most of my research is focused on studying endangered species. What's causing decline, how to mitigate those factors. Inevitably, it's always related to some human economic activity, but you can't get governments to do anything to protect these animals, because they'd rather protect economic interests than environmental interests. Adults are stubborn, whereas kids are a lot more open, and when we get kids who realize, "Wow! There's all these different things that we can be doing differently, or all these things that we can change at home. Why don't we do that?" Then they can ask their parents to do things differently.

On feedback: I've had lots of parents of students saying how impressed they are by the amount of knowledge their kids are retaining and bringing home and teaching them about anything from sustainable seafood to ocean friendly cleaning products to plastic use.

On environmental politics: It's very, very scary times. I don't even know what to make of the situation. I don't know what can be done to change. Obama did so much for the environment, and now when Trump is threatening to take away all of that work that took so long to do. It breaks my heart and terrifies me. I've been trying to figure out what can we do, and I've talked to a lot of American friends who are closely tied into the political scene there. They're all saying to me, "There's nothing you can really do in the US, but focus on Canada. Make sure what happens in the US doesn't happen in Canada." That's where I'm mainly focusing my efforts.

On critical thinking: Whenever I teach kids in Sea Smart, I present unbiased, transparent information. That's very important to me. I never present anything from a political view, but I do share with them what's currently happening and let them decide what they want to do with that information.

On what to eat: I teach my kids about sustainable seafood too, and it's really hard to know whether or not something is sustainable, because there's so many different factors to consider. I think it's great to have organizations like Ocean Wise and Sea Choice, because they take the guess work out for you. That being said, it's difficult when you don't have proper labeling. I find restaurants really difficult. Especially if they aren't Ocean Wise restaurants. I always ask the servers, and the chefs, and the managers, where is the seafood from? They always say, "I don't know."

Tesicca Truong is cofounder of CityHive, a social enterprise that seeks to create opportunities for youth to influence the future of their city. It’s an important effort to create balance between the traditional rulemakers and those who will eventually be affected by the decisions made today. With a long résumé that extends back to her childhood including entrepreneurship and environmentalism, Tesicca is well-prepared to meet the challenges that future holds. We talked to Tesicca about the city, water, and road trips.

On CityHive: We're a millennial-driven nonprofit social enterprise, based in Vancouver, and we're on a mission to transform the way that young people are engaged in the shaping and co-creation of their city.

On mission: On the one hand, we have cities and big institutions that have these big, hairy goals. Vancouver, for example, wants to be the greenest city in the world, or the most renewable city, or 100% renewable by 2040, but they won't be able to do it without people being on board, without citizen engagement. On the flip side, we have young people who have a lot of passion and energy and time, and are highly educated, often, but don't necessarily have the connections or experience. So, we see ourselves as a bridge builder where we create opportunities for people, especially young people, to be able to help solve these big, hairy goals that cities and institutions have, while also gaining experience, making connections, and the piece that's really important for young people, is having an impact, really knowing that the work that they're doing is contributing to something that's needed in the city.

On 30Network: Our first public program is called 30Network and it just launched recently. It's for thirty young people under thirty, looking at the issue of housing affordability. They’re not just people with an expert background in planning or housing or urban issues, we're looking to bring people from diverse areas of expertise, from design, from the arts, from sports, from travel, business, to look at the issues from different angles, and to come up with creative solutions, because we know that there are young people already that are facing these challenges of affordability in housing and are staying in the city. The goal is to go through a four step process and come out of it with solutions, projects, and ideas that they can really get off the ground and launched.

On the future of business: We do fee for service work for organizations that are looking to become more millennial-oriented, looking at how they can adapt their organizations for young people who are coming into the workforce, but also just to keep up with the times. Things are changing. It's not just young people who are changing; there are employees who are expecting different things out of employers as well, in terms of flexibility, in terms of the way that work is being done. We're really looking to help these organizations adapt and become leaders in their fields.

On the method: We do an internal review and an external review. On the internal side, we look at their organizational structure, for example, looking at whether their boards are representative and have young people as part of them. We also look at the organizational structure, the hiring practices, what benefits are involved and how that might be relevant or may no longer be relevant, and what might be needed to be added or modified in order to be more attractive and appealing. Then, on the external side, looking at the organization's branding, messaging, voicing, how they communicate, through what channels, and how to set up new ones. Also, what to continue doing, but also what to add to their existing portfolio of work.

On a history of activism: I guess it all started when I was in high school, actually, when I first ran a conference called Planet Earth. It was suppose to be in conjunction with the UN Habitat conference that was happening at UBC, and they were looking for a group to run the youth component of it, so we organized and planned it. At the very last minute, they underwent some restructuring at UBC, so it got cut, and we went ahead with our programming without funding, venues, sponsors, basically everything we were counting on, but we somehow made it happen. It eventually evolved to become the Vancouver School Board Sustainability Conference, which is now still going on.

On water: Later I started working on a project called "Youth for Tap," which was a pro tap water, anti-bottled water campaign, where we worked to install new water refill stations so young people had access to clean tap water in schools, but also looking at removing bottled water and providing a free alternative that people had an option to use. Water should be a right. Through that campaign it spread from my school, to my whole school district, to other cities as well. Within my school district, we were able to lobby the school board trustees to purchase one water refill station for every single school in the district. That was a big win for us.

On The Starfish Canada: I was nominated for the Top 25 Environmentalists Under 25 when I was quite young, which is really nice, but now I'm actually one of the judges for Starfish. I feel like I've really benefited from being part of the program and being nominated on a very prestigious list, but also, it's quite an honour now to be able to read about all these amazing, upcoming young people who are doing really, really great work in their communities.

On her parents: They're actually both immigrants to Canada. I think that did colour my view in many ways. Like, just feeling very grateful to be here, in Canada, first of all, for all the opportunities, like access to education. My dad always told me when he first arrived to Canada, he had to convince my grandmother that here in Canada, girls need to go to school. In Canada, you can't just expect a woman to get married and be taken care of, she needs to be educated.

On childhood: We just spent a lot of time traveling. When my parents got married, instead of going for a quick honeymoon, they saved up and then backpacked around the world for a year. When I was young we did a road trip for two months across Canada. We really fell in love with Canada and nature and the environment. I feel like that's where that connection started.

On learning: For me, a really pivotal moment, my formative years, was a program that I did called Trek. It was an outdoor education program. We spent half the year doing formal school stuff but then the rest of the year we went hiking, backpacking, kayaking. It was a rad program. That's also when they introduced the concept of sustainability. It was the first time that I started learning about things that were happening in the world through school. It really opened my eyes. I felt this urgency to do something.

On youth: I think we do a disservice to children and youth when we don't believe that they are competent and able people who are ready to contribute to our society until they turn nineteen. I think we're really, really underselling them and also depriving them of their ability to contribute, meaningfully, to the community.

Traditionally, the stereotypical environmentalist falls into one of two archetypes: the scientist collecting samples on the side of a mountain, and the hippie protester chained to a tree. Kyle Empringham knows that young environmentalists in the 21st century are a lot harder to categorize. Seven years ago he cofounded The Starfish Canada, a nationwide effort to recognize, connect, and unite young environmentalists of all kinds across the country. Since then, the organization has worked with people in a broad range of disciplines and interests, from sustainability fundraisers to solar technology designers. In an era of political change and significant challenges to environmental health, it’s important that young people have a voice and Kyle is doing his best to give them a megaphone. We talked to Kyle about activism, growing up, and the environmental conversation.

On foundation: The Starfish Canada was founded in 2010 as a university class project. A friend and I were working on biodiversity and conservation and environmental things. We knew we wanted a way to explain some of our concepts across different disciplines and different fields. We decided to create a website and see how we could bring different university disciplines together. Now it's seven years later and we're doing a lot more than that.

On communication: We've expanded to really focus on how we can help youth who are doing really great environmental work talk to other people about that work. We put the focus on youth who have great ideas and sometimes just need a little assistance in order to find the best path forward to communicate it or to get people on board.

For example, fossil fuel divestment is one of the biggest topics and people are really trying to advocate and push for their universities to divest in from fossil fuels. A lot of them get good traction but have a hard time trying to figure out how to communicate to their peers. So a lot of our work has been about trying to help them mobilize the people around them. Fossil fuel divestment may make sense to an environmentalist but it's not going to make sense to maybe an economist. So how do we bring everyone into the conversation and have good conversations about what you're trying to get to?

On the Top 25: Our biggest flagship program is Top 25 Environmentalists Under 25. Every year we celebrate 25 people really making positive change across the country who are doing great environmental work in whatever capacity that might be. Sometimes it’s a climate change activist,  sometimes it's people doing conservation work in their local communities, sometimes it's people even asking for larger political change across the federal or provincial system. It's really fun and interesting to bring all these people together. It's allowed us to figure out who some of the top environmentalists in Canada really are. And who really has momentum and traction behind them. And then through that to be able to connect them and other people together so that it's not just local communities doing little pockets of work here and there but these great youth who are doing great work are able to connect with each other and hear from each other and learn from each other, so that they can take that lesson and apply it to their own community.

On activism: We're registered as a federal non-profit. But we haven't registered as a charity for the reason that we want to be able to support these youth who are doing things that are a little more partisan.

On funding: Our funding is mostly grass roots. And we try to be really intentional about the way we get our funding. It's always a difficult balance between the philosophy of where you get your money from and simply needing money to get work done. I think it's easy to fall into the trap of a big funder that can give hundreds of thousands of dollars to do something that doesn't necessarily meet up with the community values of the project.

On success: Environmentalism is often a doom and gloom situation that we face and a lot of people are feeling inspired to do something but also feeling the weight of the world on their shoulders. Being able to say “you're doing a really good job, keep it up,” I think it kind of lifts the work that these young environmentalists are doing to a whole different place and let's them know that there's people behind them wanting them to succeed.

On politics: What I’ve seen from the environmental movement and especially young folks it's certainly a sense of being disenfranchised because it's one man, sitting at a desk, wiping away a lot of the work that's been done over the past eight years. Canada's response to that has been certainly a lot of optimism. Trudeau thanking Trump for the work that he's been doing and welcoming him with open arms. I understand the political nature of Trudeau doing that and thanking Trump and saying we have common values but I think that if you listen to young folks especially, they'll tell you that we don't have common values with the Americans in the same way that I think Trudeau is trying to convey. The environmentalists who I know aren't folks who are going to sit idly by and let Trudeau get away with some of the things he's been saying or potentially acting upon. Especially with how it's looking down south.

On working nationally: A lot of our projects span from coast to coast to coast and because of that sometimes it's hard to understand the expansiveness of the whole project. We have people in Vancouver and Halifax working together in a way they hadn't imagined before. That part has been really interesting to see and we know that we are doing work that not a lot of other groups are doing and we're doing it in a really intentional way so I think that provides certain opportunities for different kinds of conversations to be happening and we're excited about that.

On growing up: I was a very suburban kid. I was outside on the street playing street hockey but yeah not very environmental growing up. When I look back there were certainly things that my mom did but they weren't for environmental reasons. The concept of reducing, reusing, recycling was something embedded within my family. It was definitely something that as I grew up I understood that it was actually an environmental ethic that was almost unintentional that was instilled in me. Both my mom and my dad had four other brothers and sisters. My dad grew up on a farm as well. There's a bit of ethic there that gets instilled without calling it environmentalism. Even when I talk to my parents about this sort of stuff, you can see the wheels are turning in their heads like "I didn't really look at it that way but this is kind of what I've been thinking my whole life".

On conversation: My parents have voted conservative for a long period of time. In the 2015 election there were moments when we would talk about it. I grew up in a family that said you don't talk about who you vote for. But I got more politically involved so I forced the conversation. We were talking about what I'm valuing in my vote and who I wanted to see leading this country. I ended up saying that their vote is really about me. I didn't mean it in a selfish way, but if I'm your kid, don't you want to see someone who is going to help me throughout my life as well? And that was something that resonated with them. Deeper discussions and meeting people where they're at and talking to them on a values level is really the part that drives people to understand where those cognitive dissonances are and how they can maybe work to do something a little bit different.

Denise Brennan is doing her best to shape the future of going to work in Canada. Creative Coworkers, her successful coworking space is an experiment in new ways to work. Operating as both a for-profit and not-for-profit, Denise welcomes all types of businesses, social enterprises, charity events and community projects into her space, providing sponsorship where she can and offering unusual features like 24 hour access, hammocks, coffee roasted down the street, and a location in one of Vancouver’s most interesting and complicated neighbourhoods, Railtown. She’s building a community that defies traditional 9-to-5 thinking and it’s catching on.

We talked to Denise about values, sharing, and breaking down traditions.

On the business model: We're a coworking space, primarily for creative production. The business is structured as a for-profit and a not-for-profit. They work in conjunction with each other.

On the nonprofit side: The nonprofit side has a super-affordable annual membership. It's $30 a year. It gives people two hours free in the boardroom every month. A free beer/coffee on any visit. Reduced rate for workshops and invitations to events. It would have been my preference to have the whole thing be a nonprofit. But you need to spend a year becoming a nonprofit before you can apply for grant funding. I spend far more time on the nonprofit part. We sponsor things like volunteer parties for environmental or cycling organizations. We did an event for Team Helping, which fundraises for children with Type 1 diabetes. We did Say Hi to a Stranger, which works against social alienation. I do a lot of either free or substantially reduced-rates bookings for values-aligned organizations.

On the for-profit side: We have higher rates for the engineers who just come in for a meeting in the boardroom. They can pay full price. I pass that on to sponsor other events.

On values: I come from an alternative politics background. I'm very interested in civic engagement. I'm very big on community-oriented stuff. This space is in a very tricky, challenging, wonderful, diverse, odd-ball neighbourhood that requires a lot of cultural and social sensitivity. That's the kind of thing I'm interested in. Being aware of an environment and helping the people in it. Like Bicycle Valet, for example. They have a volunteer appreciation party every six months. Loving your volunteers is very values-aligned. I also did a bunch of stuff with various environmental organizations, so anything that's anti-pipeline, pro-greening, solar energy, all of that kind of stuff. Alternative energy and environmentalism. I have a lot of respect for nonprofits and how challenging it is in many ways and how tiny the margins are and how you really have to have a vision.

On division of labour: I have a business partner. He is money. I am work. It's a very good division because I have no money and he has no interest in working here. I'm the sweat.

On destiny: For some strange reason, my parents tell me, since I was a toddler, I was obsessed with sharing - equitable sharing. Everybody had to have the same amount of pie. I would take the slightly smaller piece and everybody had to have a piece of pie.

On the housing market: It took me nine months to find this space. In the interim, I became somewhat of a...not quite expert, but I became very knowledgeable about Vancouver real estate. It’s very complicated. There's a lot of politics. Certain real estate companies control certain patches of real estate. It was a very eye-opening experience. You have to be a particular kind of weirdo to get excited about negotiating a commercial lease.

On buying local: I only spent two weeks building this space out. I'm very cash-conscious. We did the build for this place for less than $25,000, which was kind of unbelievable. I had all of the furniture made in the Lower Mainland. I co-designed all these desks from North Vancouver. The ones in the kitchen are from New Westminster. I really focus on local. Our coffee is roasted a couple blocks away at Goliath at MakerLabs. Our beer is from Postmark around the corner and Hoyne from Victoria.

On the future of work: I'm part of a BC coworking collective that is slowly formalizing right now. It's a really intriguing industry to be in. The trend in work is helping us out. I think more and more people are becoming aware that you don't have to have a 9-to-5 job, and maybe there isn't even one of those for you. There's still people who work traditional hours here. They're more of the oddballs. I actually have more people who come in at 7:00 because they work on an adjusted schedule for Asian time, or they just like being early birds. Our modern understanding of what work has to be is actually a pretty brief history. But paradigms change pretty quickly and I definitely think that the 9-to-5 is going the way of the dodo.

On workspace: Your co-working space kind of looks like you, like people's dogs resemble them. There's a flavour for every personality. It is definitely a manifestation of my own weird personality out there. I also very much encourage people to make it their own.

If you are a nonprofit or business in need of office space, get in touch with Denise at Creative Coworkers. Here’s a partial list of organizations supported by Creative Coworkers:

Women in Production

Vancouver Futurists

Federal Politics Chat Nights

Ideas Vancouver

Wordpress.com in a weekend

Meditation & Chocolate for Creatives

Say Hi to a Stranger

Randi Winter‘s Team Helping

The Art Party

LAB ART SHOW

The Bicycle Valet Better Environmentally Sound Transportation (BEST)

British Columbia Cycling Coalition (BCCC)

TEDxEastVan

Cineworks Annex

Chapel Sound Festival 2016

Elaine Cheng has a degree in Food and Nutrition. She also has a Master’s Degree in Food Culture & Communications. She also has a successful food consulting business. The common thread should be obvious. Elaine’s love of food has led her through all kinds of experiences, which she has collectively leveraged to give back to her community. Whether it’s through feeding those in need, telling stories, or helping people get their ideas off the ground, Elaine uses food as the means to make positive change in the lives of those around her. Speaking with Elaine will inspire you to take action to support something you care about, and also eat a big sandwich or a bowl of noodles. We talked to Elaine about learning, eating, and community.

On education: I’m more of a practical, hands-on person than a book person. I didn't want to go the clinical dietitian route and work in hospitals. So I decided to do my culinary training at the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts. Then, I worked as a Nutrition Consultant for restaurants for about six years on behalf of the Government Health Check Program and the Informed Dining Program. Then I thought maybe I could pursue further studies in these two avenues, nutrition and cooking. I looked into a couple Masters and there's one in Italy that’s so out of the box. They don't believe in just regurgitating information and memorizing textbooks and regurgitating it and then forgetting it. They believe in experiential learning. We went on trips every month to a different part of Europe and lived there for a week and learn about the food culture. We dined in vineyards. We made relationships with farmers and really heard their stories about how they started and got to know their families. We also visited breweries, distilleries, cheese makers, fishmongers, and the whole spectrum of the food culture in that city.

On experience: Our reports were not written. They use the five senses. For example, our class was broken up into three groups. One went to Amsterdam, one went to Switzerland, and one went to France. Each of us had to present our findings. The Switzerland group staggered us around the classroom and blindfolded us. Then, they would pour wine in our glasses and ask, "What kind of memories does this evoke? What kind of stories come across your mind when you drink this wine? Do you think it's a red or a white wine?" Then, they would play music. They would play sounds of wood crackling noises and they tell us, "This is what we heard when we walked into the home of the farmer at the top of his mountainside." Then, they would walk around with trays of truffle-infused fennel and waft it in our noses. "This is what we smelled when we walked in the fields of this place." It's a lot of using your other senses. We had to drink a lot of wine, then chart our emotions, twenty different emotions in order of what we feel, anger, aggression, excitement, happiness, a whole bunch of them. It was funny to see that our classmates had similar graphs of those emotions. We do the same for chocolate, cheese, honey, prosciutto, olive oil. We learned to train our palette to be critics and learn to distinguish quality in food.

On food and community: My classmates were Austrian, Australian, Norwegian, Japanese, German, so we would have cultural nights in each of our homes. I became really inspired by the community that I experienced there. I wanted to bring that to a lonely city like Vancouver. I started thinking about ways to incorporate food and communicate it in a way that bridges community. Then, I moved to the UK for a couple months to do my internship. I worked with the former Jamie Oliver Ministry of Food. I saw the poverty gap and I wrote my thesis on how food can bridge that. I also worked with co-workers who were all from the streets. They were given a chance by the Prince’s Trust Foundation to really empower them with skills and training and apprenticeship in kitchens. They decided to move back into their communities and teach kids and adults how to cook.

On food waste: There's a lot happening around food waste and food redistribution and really cool, creative movements highlighting food waste. I wanted to focus on one aspect of food sustainability and that was the one. Like imperfect produce. They would sell it in different grocery stores and market it as a brand and really draw attention to that. Then, I approached the founder of this worldwide movement called Feeding the 5000. Feedback Global is his organization, and they have movements all over 52 countries around the world except North America. I asked if we could bring the movement to Canada. It’s is basically an event to raise awareness for food waste in the city. We fed a couple thousand people all on food that would have gone to waste, imperfect produce from the farms that they can't sell in stores, overstocked freezers from suppliers, overstocked items, near expired items.

On events: To tap into the creative food communication bridging community, I launch events that highlight a social cause that's really dear to my heart. For example, I partnered with Dinner Party YVR. I did an event to highlight bringing clean water to Africa. We used food and art and storytelling through a four course menu to illustrate the story of Africa. Then, at the fundraiser, each element on the plate tells a story about the people. It was a progression. It was a journey of what it's like to bring water there. I know there's a lot of foodies and people loving food in the city and events. I wanted to do an event story to highlight something they would not think about if they're just going along in their day to day routine. I like to bring in social causes that just really impact the world into action. Food is my vehicle to bring that up.

On presentation: One event was even more gourmet, beautifully plated items, but they were all imperfect produce. We would slice fennel really thin and we would deep fry things. We plated used oyster shells that were from a restaurant and we sanitized them and we did a faux fried rice out of roasted cauliflower. We plated it like art, like a high-end restaurant using garbage. That's where the connection comes in.

On the future: I don't like to preach to the converted. I like to preach to the person who's never thought about it in a relevant way. I would love to start a social enterprise. Own a commissary kitchen, have a co-working space outside that would help entrepreneurs, a good working community space. Then, the kitchen would be for any food entrepreneurs who need the space to make something for social good and give back, zero waste products or whatever. I also have a model where we employ people who are marginalized to work in the kitchen and have a coffee shop there as well.

If you’ve ever drained a three pointer on a public basketball hoop with no net, you know what it feels like to chase after your ball across the court. It takes you out of your rhythm, disrupts your flow, and just isn’t very fun. But a hoop with no net is also a symbol of the divide between affluent communities where kids have the opportunity to excel at sports and working class neighbourhoods where they often don’t. Brodan Thiel is doing his best to bridge that divide and make sure all young players have access to high level basketball skills training. He started with the Swishin’ Mission, a program to put nets on community hoops, and has expanded his ambitions to include free summer skills sessions and a low-cost academy called Dynamite Basketball. We talked to Brodan about accessibility, Instagram, and changing lives.

On the Swishin' Mission: I started putting up a net, then taking a picture and putting it on our Instagram, then we got a huge population of people coming to our Instagram account, being like, whoa, you're putting up nets in our community? Then we said, if you hashtag #swishinmission, I'll go to your court and I'll put up a net. Every time I put up a net, we post pics on Instagram and someone else reaches out [to fund another net]. We are living in the world at a time when instant gratification is the key thing. If you put up on Instagram that this person donated it, so this is their court, they are going to feel good about themselves.

On the importance of good facilities: Nobody wants to shoot on a hoop with no net. There's no feedback. Your ball starts rolling elsewhere, you don't hear that swish sound. Everyone wants to hear that swish sound. We put up around 150 last year. It was cool for me to do, and then we were donated a court in East Vancouver at the Italian Cultural Centre. We put up a lot of benches, we repainted the court, we painted the backboards, made it all nice. Then we did free sessions all summer for everyone in East Van who wanted to show up.

On opportunity: There's a lot of people out there trying to make money off basketball right now, because parents are willing to pay for all this stuff. I'm not going to lie to you, I'm trying to make a living doing this, but our services are much cheaper than a lot of the other ones, and we are trying to get it so everyone can get involved. We are chasing sponsorships not only for the Swishin' Mission, but for our academy as well. Giving kids the opportunity to play high level basketball, go to America, get the exposure that they couldn't if they didn't have money. This year, Big Brothers Vancouver has come on board donating a hundred nets to us, which is a great start, but that's just a start.

On commitment: It's going to keep growing. There is no way this is going to stop. Anytime there's a community endeavour like this, and people are getting behind it, it just keeps growing. If someone is passionate about it like I am, then that's the power in it. If someone is just doing it half-hearted, it's not going to work out. I've made a lot of financial sacrifices. I don't want to talk about the numbers or anything, but I was on full-time teaching salary, full-time coaching salary as well, and I basically wiped that all out just to pursue this, because I see this as the biggest thing in my life, and it's bringing me a lot of passion. I feel good about it.

On accessibility: We run skill sessions all year round for our kids. We train them on at different schools in different places. For a skill session for us it's $15 for these kids, which is next to nothing. Other academies are charging upwards of $50. We have a full gym, and that's what I would prefer, a place where lots of kids are coming, as opposed to having five kids who are paying a lot of money.

The way sports are going, not only in Vancouver, but everywhere in the world, is toward specification. We used to play sports year-round: you play volleyball, you play basketball, and then you play rugby. Now, kids are starting at six years old only playing basketball and they don't play anything else, and parents are putting time and money into this. Upwards of $10,000 a year is not unheard of. How do we get to a point where kids who are from families that can’t afford $10,000 can receive training like that, and still progress at the same rate. It's very difficult.

East Vancouver is traditionally a working-class area. There has only been one provincial championship from East Vancouver in history, and that was Britannia, one of my college teammates won it back in the day. There's a correlation between money and success in basketball, and so how do we get to a point where these kids are getting the same opportunities, the same training, even if they don't have the money? So, the long term vision of the program is to have a year-round sustainable product that is high-level for everybody.

On learning: Quest University is an unbelievable place that changed my life. I was a high school dropout. Basketball was not my number one thing growing up. I was into the party scene. Then I grew to be six foot five and very athletic, and I thought, okay, let's try this basketball thing out. I started taking it seriously, but I got cut from my grade 11 team, and that was a big cross in the road. Either you can work hard and try to get where you want to go, or else you can just quit altogether. I dropped out of school at that time; when I came back, I was more focused on my education. Then I went to Quest, and I was learning to write emails, I was learning all the stuff that I never learned in school. I was a very low-level learner. But at Quest you are allowed to focus solely on one thing for three and half weeks at a time, and that worked for me. I went on to teach high school for three years, now I have my masters in positive coaching from the University of Missouri. As soon as I started seeing success in my life, and got the blueprint of what it takes to be successful, everything sort of became easy, because if you work like a dog, you are going to get what you put in at the end of the day.

On success: We get emails from parents who are saying, “you're changing my kids life.” Of all the kids who came out last summer, the ones who came out consistently went from their B team to their A team at their schools, or they went from bench player to starter. This one kid we had got cut from the provincial team, and he said, I'm going to join you guys, I'm going to work my butt off all summer. He went to a national showcase camp and he made the top 10. For me, that's saying not only is this working, but it's giving these kids opportunities that they wouldn't have had elsewhere. That's the huge thing for me, it's changing these kids lives. We've seen a lot of success. We went from eight kids to 200 in our program in six months.

On history: I grew up in a very tough situation. My father was an alcoholic my whole life. Not to say that nobody else has that, a lot of people do. My mom was a strong force in my life. We lived in co-op housing from the time I was 12 until I graduated high school. We went to school with all these rich kids from North Vancouver, and we were getting made fun of. Then me and my brother started lifting weights, we were not getting pushed around anymore. Sports was our outlet. I just hope kids don't have to go through that, and I hope that basketball can maybe be the outlet. Hopefully, changing the community one kid at a time.