2019 Annual Meeting Learning Journeys
Learning Journeys are a favourite experience of GABV members and will take place on Thursday, February 21, 2019. They offer an opportunity to experience first-hand the creativity and innovation in local markets, the most pressing issues, what social innovators are doing to create change, and how banking can support them and help to create impact in communities.
Read below for details about the various Learning Journeys you can choose from if you indicated your attendance during registration.
Sign-up for your selection will happen during:
Pre-Summit Dinner
Vancouver Convention Centre West, Room 301- 305
Monday, February 18
7:00 pm – 9:15 pm
Closing Dinner
Stanly Park Pavilion
Wednesday, February 20
7:30 pm – 9:45 pm
In 2008, Vancity created a financial literacy training program delivered by staff in the communities we serve. Since inception, we have trained more than 20% of our workforce to deliver basic financial literacy workshops in community. Ten years out, we have shared this award-winning program with ~100 other credit unions across the country. The program has proven transformative for staff, who learn from community about real learning needs of our members. In this experiential workshop, we’ll share the training methodology, overall vision and look at the curriculum and how we work with community partners. This Learning Journey will align with the #MeToo theme and will include a presentation from a community partner that focus on anti-violence against women and uses our financial literacy offerings as a way to help women rebuild their confidence and resilience. We will provide a tour of another community partner that has incorporated financial literacy into their employment program and has utilized our financial literacy program.
Canada is in the early days of a process of “truth and reconciliation” about our history of engagement and destructive behaviour to the Indigenous people of this part of world (which Indigenous people refer to as Turtle Island). It has become imperative to engage Canadians in dialogue and transformative experiences that will begin to repair relationships between Indigenous peoples and the settler or colonial Canadians. Reconciliation was recently added as a core value for Vancity. The credit union has significant and long-standing partnerships with Indigenous-led organizations across our service area that are doing important public education work on reconciliation as a way forward of healing and growth for Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. On this walk-about, we’ll meet some of our partners and we’ll learn from them what we are doing right and what we can do better. We believe these lessons translate to other communities doing their own reconciliation work with other indigenous peoples.
Vancouver has a “greenest city action plan,” and it is easy to understand the strong connection of the residents of this beautiful city to principles of environmental sustainability. One of the earliest adopters of curbside recycling, a bottle deposit refund system and car and bike-sharing, Vancouver is home to some innovative and game-changing green businesses. We’ll meet some Vancity business members who are at the forefront of the green and sharing economy, from zero waste stores to a long-standing consumer food co-op and the first car-sharing model in North America. They’ll share their business models, their challenges and their hopes for a sustainable future.
Vancouver is simultaneously recognized as both one of the most desirable places to live in the world while also being one of the most expensive cities in which to do so. Affordability is a key issue for residents and a daily topic of discussion in the news, in policy circles and around the water cooler. While the hot housing market is full of real estate speculation, there is also a growing movement (supported by Vancity) in not-for-profit real estate development that aims to build vibrant, affordable and inspiring rental homes in BC. From unlocking the value of real estate assets held by faith community to build new housing in collaboration with community partners, Vancity has helped lead developments from the beginning and continues to support through financing, social impact investing and joint venture developments. We’ll meet two community partners and tour two housing sites in Vancouver.
Food security is an issue of growing importance around the world, and in the province of British Columbia, the protection of foodlands and the eat-local movement are increasingly important. One of the innovations in the urban environment is the use of above-ground (or surface) food cultivation on unused commercial spaces. One local example is having record success, not only producing local artisanal greens, but also providing jobs and training to individuals with barriers to employment. Another is the explosion of artisanal farmers markets where small growers have ready access to enthusiastic “100 mile diet” followers. We’ll meet with two social enterprises in the food security space and have lunch with a local restaurant host focused on hyper local and what that means to a vibrant local economy.
“The poor always pay back” is the foundation of microcredit lending. Vancity offers microcredit solutions – both retail and commercial – to members who, with access to a small amount of capital, can lift themselves and their families out of poverty and into productive economic activity. One of the many challenges of coming to Canada is how difficult it is to get credentials recognized here. Many “internationally trained professionals” struggle in survival jobs, unable to get back to work in their chosen professions. In partnership with local settlement agencies, we offer a “foreign credential recognition” loan program to provide small loans to newcomers to get back into their fields. In this journey, we’ll look at microcredit in a developed economy, and meet some of our members who have bootstrapped their way out of poverty.
British Columbia is a relatively new province, having been established in the late 1880s on the traditional lands of Indigenous people and having grown to the size we are today by newcomer arrivals. Each year, hundreds of thousands of newcomers come to Canada. In addition to planned migration, Vancouver is one of the few intake points for government-assisted refugees in Canada and increasingly, an entry point for privately sponsored refugees and asylum seekers. On this journey, we’ll explore how the credit union collaborates with newcomer settlement agencies to provide supports to migrants and refugees when they arrive. We’ll visit both our Commercial Drive community branch, as well as a large settlement partner with whom the credit union has partnered to build a world-leading model for refugee supports.
As a leader in driving social enterprises, Vancity has witnessed a direct improvement in the quality of life for residents in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) – one of the poorest communities in Canada – because of the work of social enterprises working here. These social enterprises train and employ dozens of DTES residents with barriers to employment or who need life skills training as part of their employment training. Vancity has been a Canadian leader in social enterprise support and development and we’ll meet some partners in whom we’ve invested and helped grow over the years. This journey will visit several of our vibrant partners tackling issues of financial inclusion in this neighbourhood.
A number of Vancity’s business members are leaders in the waste reduction sector and have proved to be successful through innovative business models. These businesses are leaders as they continue to inspire other organizations to follow a similar model in their pursuit to reduce, reuse and recycle. They focus not only on the bottom line, but provide meaningful and supported employment and training for individuals re-entering the workforce. These jobs help lift people out of debilitating poverty and help create community opportunities in a place known as “Canada’s poorest postal code.” We’ll visit two or three leading social purpose businesses who marry environmental imperatives with inclusive hiring practices.
We’ll visit Vancity’s most unique branch, Pigeon Park Savings (PPS), a storefront “bank” in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) that serves about 4,000 individuals living in poverty in the DTES. PPS provides basic banking in a welcoming environment for a flat fee of $5/month for a savings and transaction account. PPS is unique as a partnership between Vancity and a DTES agency that works with the hardest to house. We’ll also meet a unique social enterprise that provides survival economy work for individuals experiencing homelessness by providing a street newspaper to vend. And, we’ll also look at Vancity’s work to offer ethical alternatives to predatory payday lenders, including our Fair & Fast loan. Payday lending in Canada (and BC) preys on people with low incomes who pay an Annual Percentage Rate of close to 600% for short-term loans.
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The Global Alliance for Banking on Values is an independent network of banking institutions using finance to deliver sustainable economic, social and environmental development. -
Summit host Vancity improves the financial well-being of its members while helping to develop healthy communities that are socially, economically and environmentally sustainable.