Sometimes what makes the biggest difference in a person’s life is the sense of confidence that comes from getting back to work and belonging in the community.

Ken Lyotier was a champion of the people in the Downtown Eastside, where he lived and worked since the 1970s. He was a tireless innovator and advocate for those living in poverty and for “binners,” people who earn money by collecting and returning recyclables.

Often organizations that approach Vancity Community Foundation for support are managing multiple competing priorities. Through enterprise capacity reviews, Vancity Community Foundation assists organizations with assessing their key strengths and challenges in the areas of product/service, marketing, management, and governance, infrastructure and systems, operations and human resources, and financial systems.

Open each winter season, Aunt Leah’s lots sell high-quality Christmas trees and accessories, including stands, wreaths, swags and greenery, across Metro Vancouver. The lots are run by a combination of employees and volunteers and also provides training and employment opportunities to at-risk youth.

Vancity Community Foundation supported ShredMasters to participate in a custom marketing workshop to build internal marketing capacity while completing a marketing plan. CSE also received support to hire a sales person to grow the client base for both ShredMasters and ValleyRecycling, a commercial and residential supportive employment recycling social enterprise the organization also operates.

As part of VCF’s commitment to strengthening social enterprise, and in order to help vendors with their sales our social enterprise developer worked with Megaphone to develop a workshop that would give vendors some tools to better understand where their customers are coming from.

Founded by West Coast LEAF and the Peter A. Allard School of Law at UBC and with a significant contribution from an anonymous donor, Rise Women’s Legal Centre is a full-service storefront family law legal clinic serving low income women in the Lower Mainland.

CoDevelopment Canada (CoDev) is a Vancouver-based, non-governmental organization (NGO) that links labour and community groups working for social change. In particular, CoDev’s role is to build solidarity between workers in Canada and in Latin America. Years ago, a small Donor Advised Fund was established by CoDev at Vancity Community Foundation to help support its operations. But this story became even...

We want to grow the next generation of ecological farmers in BC. Our ideal future would be that new and young farmers are able to thrive, and that people everywhere –from all socioeconomic backgrounds – are able to access healthy foods. We want good, ecologically grown food to become the heart of our culture and the way by which we...