Blog | Social Finance

Canadian Youth Business Foundation Announces Annual Chairman’s Awards

By Gwen Hughes - December 22, 2010 - Comments

With Global Entrepreneurship Week behind us, the Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF) has turned its attention to the Annual Chairman’s Awards program. The awards are a way to recognize the most outstanding businesses and entrepreneurs across Canada, and this year we have revised our award categories to reflect some exciting new market trends.

These changes honor new businesses that are not only turning a profit and creating jobs, but are also examples of integrating social awareness and “doing good” into their business models.

Categories: Social Entrepreneurship National

The Great Canadian Mentoring Challenge and Social Finance

By Gwen Hughes - November 02, 2010 - Comments

In my first post, I spoke about the importance of individuals in the social finance field collaborating, sharing their knowledge and ideas, and forging a sense of community.

An important element of connection-building is mentorship. Just about every successful business person, from your local store owner to Sir Richard Branson, has gotten support and advice from someone with experience, whether as an informal acquaintance or a formal business mentor. Everyone has knowledge and advice that can be helpful to another, whether they’ve been in business for five months, five years or five decades.

Categories: Finance Models Social Enterprise National

Introducing Myself and the Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF)

By Gwen Hughes - October 14, 2010 - Comments

I’ve been a faithful reader of socialfinance.ca for some time, but until now I’ve only experienced blogging from the reader’s point of view. Tired of being a lurker, I’m throwing my hat into the blogging ring to share my perspective on the emerging fields of social finance and social entrepreneurship.

In my five years as Program Manager at the Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF), I’ve developed a strong interest in microcredit, social finance and measurable outcomes to poverty alleviation. My role is to help CYBF grow its client base, develop new loan funds targeted at emerging growth areas and provide tools and resources that help our stakeholders and our entrepreneur and mentor alumni