The Centre for Social Innovation operates according to something it calls “the theory of change.”
According to
CSI staffer Kyle Shantz, “The theory holds that if we provide space where people who are thinking about complex social problems can form a community, the community will produce collisions of people and ideas that we hope will spark social innovation.”
Their latest project, Turnout Toronto, was born in the wake of another, and in their opinion rather less hopeful set of personal collisions.
“A few of us were sitting around a kitchen table last winter during the height of the political scandal rocking our city,” Shantz says, “and we were wondering how in a mature, modern western democracy people could not only tolerate such a toxic political environment, but worse, how some could actually defend it. The state of political discourse on the subject seemed infantile on both sides.”
They considered staging a protest, or a letter-writing campaign, but because they’ve got “innovation” stuck right there in their name, they actually came up with something far cooler: a sort of job fair for people looking to make a difference, rather than a paycheque.
“Instead of employers and prospective employees, it would be civically engaged organizations at the tables trying to recruit members and volunteers,” Shantz says. “We'd invite the public and let them wander through aisles and aisles of potential starting places. Do you ride a bike to work? Meet CycleTO. Do you love our parks? Join Toronto Park People! By getting involved with something pre-political you'll become civically engaged by accident.”
Two previous iterations of the idea - one in the
Annex and one in Regent Park — were successful enough to spin it off into two more, one at
U of T tonight, and the other at
Fairview Library on the 30th.
“Annex is close to U of T, so the audience skewed a bit younger, and Regent Park is home to more newcomers so that crowd was a bit more diverse,” Shantz says of the two events which, despite several forms of disparity between the neighbourhoods in which they were held, ended up being quite similar.
“Regent Park was a great opportunity. Newcomers to Canada are some of the brightest people in the world, but I've found anecdotally that some of them are hesitant to become politically engaged, many have escaped terrible and corrupt governments and are just happy to be here. They're hesitant to "rock the boat" you might say. But, the best part about Turnout is that on its face it isn't about political engagement, it's about finding out more about organizations doing something great for your neighbourhood that you can get involved with.”
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Kyle Shantz