Celebrating Ten Years of Social Innovation at the Social Ventures Zone
Reconnection, inspirational speeches, and plenty of donuts to go around: A recap of the SVZ’s tenth anniversary celebration
By: Jake Hamilton
April 1st, 2024
On the evening of March 19th, nearly 150 members of the Social Ventures Zone (SVZ) community both past and present gathered to celebrate an exciting milestone — the SVZ’s tenth birthday!
Beginning in 2014 as a nomadic pop-up around TMU with an initial cohort of 16 dedicated students, the SVZ has transformed into a University fixture, supporting social innovation for students and the broader community alike. In 2016, We moved into our current home at Gould & Bond (KHS045), where we continue to operate today. The SVZ continues to expand it’s scope and programming, incubating 30 to 40 social startups at any one time and offering hundreds of students entrepreneurial learning opportunities annually.
On the night of the celebration, we invited familiar faces from all phases of the SVZ’s history to join us in marking the occasion in style. In keeping with our ethos, the event was catered by two incredible Toronto social enterprises: Newcomer Kitchen, a nonprofit that provides women newcomers to Canada economic and social opportunities, and Do Good Donuts, an SVZ-incubated venture that offers meaningful work opportunities to young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We were thrilled to display the first ever Do Good Donuts ‘Donut Wall’, designed and constructed by our friends at the Design Fabrication Zone. Our beer sponsor for the evening was Joseph Bloor Brewery, a local venture founded by long time SVZ coach Mark Barnes!
As the evening began to ramp up, our speakers took the mic to offer congratulations, inspiration, and thoughts on what social innovation can look like over the next ten years.
Our Co-Founder, Alex Gill, kicked things off with a look back at the Zone’s ten years of growth, and the reward that comes with supporting engaged, innovative social entrepreneurs. “There's never a better, more magical moment”, said Alex, “than when you're beside an entrepreneur and the lights start to come on, and the business model, a little piece of it falls into place, or some funding comes through, where you get to see a path in front of you, where you're like, ‘Hey, this could work.’ Being beside people when that happens is a magical moment. And we have had countless moments like that in ten years."
Up next we heard from Assistant Vice-President, Zone Learning & Strategic Initiatives, John MacRitchie, who spoke to the importance of Social Enterprise in the broader world of startups and incubators. “Many of the other [...] programs around entrepreneurship and innovation, they're still at the stage of looking at it from that next Facebook, or that next tech startup”, he offered, “they haven't realised the people that you can reach and the things that you can do by expanding into areas like social innovation and social ventures. It's about helping others make an impact in their communities and really wanting to drive that change.” John was followed by Provost Roberta Iannacito-Provenzano, a longtime champion of equitable entrepreneurship, who spoke to the SVZ as a “critical component of TMU’s vision to be Canada's leading comprehensive innovation university”.
The speaker section was closed out with remarks from our guest of honour, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow. Mayor Chow, having spent many years next door to the SVZ at her Institute for Change Leaders, spoke to the importance of creative social entrepreneurship for Toronto’s future as a global city. Mayor Chow concluded the evening’s remarks with some words of inspiration.
With Mayor Chow in attendance, as well as Toronto Centre City Councillor Chris Moise, it was the perfect occasion to make the final announcement of the night: a new slate of open, publicly-accessible programming funded by the City of Toronto, to mark the Zone’s tenth anniversary! Thanks in large part to funding provided by the City's Business Incubation & Commercialization (BIC) Grant Program, the program will include 11 events taking place between May and November of 2024. The mix of panels and workshops will feature a diverse list of topics led by industry leaders and area experts. Exact dates, hosts, and panellists for these sessions will be announced soon, so stay tuned to our social media! Check out our gallery below for more photos from the SVZ10 event.
Thank you to everyone who joined us to mark this occasion, and we look forward to what the next ten years will bring!
All Photos by Jae Yang