Minutes of last meeting (6/18/2012)

[Jay Stewart]

Minutes of June 18, 2012 Meeting

 

Present: Jay, Shyamala, Helen, Mary Lee, Diane, and Carol.
(Diane provided yogurts and Jay had fresh strawberries.)

 

We briefly discussed recollections related to the Beran (“Arab Spring”) and Chase (“Transition Towns”) talks. We will want to combine these recollections, especially attendance counts, for our grant report. Sharon had asked to have our Roads Scholar grant extended and it was granted. (I found out today that we have $500 left.) So we discussed possible social entrepreneurs that might speak here—see the list in the agenda, which is reproduced below.

 

As before, we decided to focus on local people and settled on Carey Wheaton. We also thought that late September or early to middle October would be the best times. We decided that, since Wheaton lives nearby, we would request that she do three lectures (at three schools), but still the same lecture.

 

Diane noted that MCC’s entrepreneurship instructor was definitely “on-board,” so we selected MCC as one of the schools. The class meets TR at 12:30 and Diane was confident that more people from the public would come. She also thought that additional funds could be raised ($100-200), if needed. Carol knew supportive people in CCSU’s business school, so she was going to ask about their level of interest and when the possible classes met. Shyamala knew of a couple of relevant USJ courses also, including their intro to business course. UHart has a similar course (TR 9:20-10:40 ) and others in the entrepreneurship major. As I recall we thought the third lecture would be at either UHart or USJ (University of St. Joseph, which is not a college any more), depending on the possible courses and times.

 

Mary Lee agreed to contact Wheaton regarding possible interest, fees, and dates, which she has done already. (Not heard about any reply yet.)

 

Finally, I suggested that we might think about developing for our website a list of key films related to peace studies and conflict resolution. See the sample entry at the end of the agenda below. Someone suggested that this might already exist, so I said I would look a little harder for such a list. I still have not found any as detailed as my sample entry.

 

That is about all we did.

 

Jay

 

 

 

 

 

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Agenda Items for June 18, 2012 Meeting

 

Social entrepreneur possibilities:  (from 1/19/2012 minutes)

We also discussed possible social entrepreneur (SE) speakers. Mary Lee had suggested Carey Wheaton at Billings Forge ( http://billingsforgeworks.org/ ) and Jay had suggested Dean Cycon of Dean’s Beans (http://www.deansbeans.com/coffee/index.html ), but we liked the idea of focusing on local examples. We decided (1) that we need to compile a list of possible candidates for discussion, (2) we would have the public presentation at MCC, and (3) we would aim for the later time periods, April 4 or 18. We would do as much of this as possible via email.

 

Somebody mentioned that there was a recent conference on SE in Hartford. It looks like we might have some good local sources here. Here are some links related to the conference.
http://www.hartfordbusiness.com/news20378.html
http://www.beyondbusinessasusual.org/2011event.htm
The conference was sponsored by reSET ( Social Enterprise Trust), which is local (and even has Cary Wheaton on its Board of Directors, as well as a CCSU faculty member):
http://www.socialenterprisetrust.org/

I will start there and try to generate a list of possibilities.

 

Sorry, it looks like I didn’t follow-through on that last promise. I recall my last effort on this topic reached the conclusion that few courses were relevant to this topic during the spring semester and that it was too late in the semester for professors to add material. Shyamala provided additional links to info about the following people.

Cary Wheaton, Executive Director

Cary Wheaton is the Executive Director of Billings Forge Community Works, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization located in the Frog Hollow neighborhood of Hartford with a mission of transforming lives through job creation, improved housing, farm to table programming, and arts and enrichment opportunities. Cary oversees Firebox Restaurant, the Kitchen at Billings Forge, The Studio, The Farmers Market, Garden, and the Billings Forge residences. 

Cary has created and owned five award-winning restaurants in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Previously, she oversaw Nuestra Culinary Ventures in Boston, a shared-use commercial kitchen that was the home to more than 60 start-up food businesses. Cary has a long history of business development and operations consulting to small non-profits, specializing on organizations in the culinary field.

In 2006, she relocated to Connecticut to assist the Melville Charitable Trust with opening of their farm-to-table restaurant Firebox. Cary is the mother of a beautiful 16 year old daughter, Mei Clare.

Social Enterprise Trust:  Kate Emery, The Walker Group (Chairman) /  David Fearon, Central Connecticut State University

In October of 2009, a group of concerned citizens, educators, and leaders from business and nonprofit organizations got together in Farmington Connecticut to talk about the growing Social Enterprise movement and our desire to see it catch on in a big way throughout Connecticut.  We are interested in promoting the idea and development of Social Enterprise within and around our state and welcome hearing from anyone who has ideas or resources that we should know about.

Dean Cycon of Dean’s Beans (Boston area I think):

http://www.deansbeans.com/coffee/aboutus.html

Each player in our cycle of production and distribution, from the farmer to the consumer, participates in socially just and environmentally responsible trade. We hope that all other coffee companies will follow our lead.

We are proud to be a founding member of Cooperative Coffees, Inc., the first roaster's cooperative created to buy direct, Fair Trade coffee from farmer coops, and make it available to any small roaster who wants to participate in the Fair Trade movement. We are also active members of the Fair Trade Federation, an international organization of dedicated Fair Traders (no poseurs allowed).

Sasha Chanoff of Refuge Point (www.refugepoint.org ) located in Boston.

It permanently relocates refugees in life-threatening situations to countries where they can rebuild their lives in safety and with dignity. We work in camps and cities across Africa to improve access to resettlement for refugees with no other options for survival. The co-founder and executive director, Sasha Chanoff, has worked for over a decade in refugee rescue, relief and resettlement operations in Africa and the United States. Prior to launching RefugePoint, Sasaha consulted with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Kenya and worked with the International Organization for Migration throughout Africa, identifying refugees in danger, undertaking rescue missions and working on refugee protection issues with the US, Canadian, Australian and other governments. Sasha has worked extensively with many refugee populations, including Sudanese Lost Boys, Somali Bantus, Congolese Tutsis-at-risk, Liberians and Sierra Leonians among others. He has appeared on 60 Minutes as well as in other national and international TV, radio and print media outlets, has lectured, presented and given keynote speeches at universities and international refugee conferences and has published extensively on refugee issues.

Joel Henry, President and Founder, Fig Food Company (NYC)--- www.figfood.com 

Sure, Fig Food makes delicious soup. But there's more in each spoonful than may meet your mouth. So, what is it? It's a community learning together about the benefit of plant-based foods. A community where the fence between consumers and organic farmers is lifted with the exchange of ideas and goods. A community looking to make our world a better place. We call it Fig Talk, and hope that you will join us.

Rink Dickinson – co-founder, co-Executive Director, co-op member (Boston area)

Since our founding in 1986 Rink has played, at one time or another, almost every major role in helping Equal Exchange to become a model of a democratically controlled, socially responsible business — Co-founder, Board Chair, Director of Sales, and since 1999 co-Executive Director. Rink was deeply influenced by the two principle areas where he grew up: inner-city Detroit and the “Springsteen” region of New Jersey. He first gained a passion for organic foods when working at the New England Food Co-ops in the early 1980’s. There he met Michael Rozyne and Jonathan Rosenthal, with whom he co-founded Equal Exchange in 1986. Their goal was to create an unprecedented, progressive organization that balanced the interests of farmers, customers, shareholders and workers. They had no models to follow, but did decide to forego the privileges that normally accrue to entrepreneurs. Instead they structured Equal Exchange as a worker-owned cooperative, where every employee would also be an equal owner, each with one vote and each eligible to serve on the company’s board.

 

Possible courses at our schools:

Fall 2012 at UHart:

Seminar in Entrepreneurship  MW   2:55-4:10

Entrepreneurship                    W   5:00-7:20

The World of Business             TR 9:20-10:40 (several sections)

 

Possible Project: Movie/Video Resources for Teachers (example follows)

 

Title: Bringing Down a Dictator

Year, Director, Type, & Length: 2001, Steve York, documentary, 56 minutes

Summary/uses: Award-winning documentary film about how Serbian youth used civil disobedience, rock 'n roll and ridicule to topple their government nonviolently in 2000 by following many of Gene Sharp’s techniques for non-violent change.

Availability: (ILL = Inter-Library Loan)
Amazon purchase ($20) and reviews (5 stars) at:
 http://www.amazon.com/Bringing-Down-Dictator-Ivan-Marovic/dp/B00125DW8Y
 Streaming video from Amazon ($2).
CT libraries:
  UCONN- Storrs (ILL, VHS);  ECSU (ILL, VHS)

Resources:
Peace Magazine video review:
   http://peacemagazine.org/archive/v18n3p28.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bringing_Down_A_Dictator  
Study/viewer questions are attached.