Stacy Lee Kong had a revelation. The editor and publisher of Friday Things had just come through the Canadian Film Centre’s Fifth Wave Initiative, a feminist startup accelerator program dedicated to the growth and development of women-owned digital media enterprises. Lee Kong is a veteran of the legacy lifestyle media space, earning her chops with magazines like Chatelaine, Canadian Living and Flare.

Lee Kong is well-versed in how to do the editorial side of things. But in starting her own business, she wasn’t sure about how to do marketing and sales.

People – white people – in more established media outlets told her not to waste her time with an accelerator. But Lee Kong found it useful, both for what she learned and for the access to people who could help her.

After she wrapped Fifth Wave, Lee Kong said she was reflecting on the people who told her it was useless. Then she realized those people didn’t look like her, didn’t have her experience, come from a more privileged background.

And this was when she had the revelation.

“I was like, oh, you just know lawyers. You just know salespeople,” says Lee Kong. “You know who’s investing in community media and you can get a meeting with them. That’s why you think it’s useless.”

Anita Li is nodding her head vigorously as Lee Kong is speaking. Li started her new media outlet, The Green Line, after “feeling invalidated” by the legacy media outlets she worked for in Toronto.

Li grew up in Scarborough, the eastern part of Toronto, where visible minorities make up 73.4% of the population and 56.6% are foreign born.  Her parents moved there from Hong Kong.

Growing up in a highly diverse part of Toronto, “I was keenly aware of  the fact that the dominant media narratives were white,” Li notes, adding, “Growing up with that disconnect was a weird thing.”

Li left Toronto for New York in order to pursue journalism that focused more on equity and justice issues, as Canadian media rarely covered those topics, especially through a race lens. Li worked for large American digital media outlets including Mashable, then Complex Media. Li helped oversee coverage of the 2016 U.S. election (the election that Trump won) as Fusion’s justice editor. 

What Li was learning while working with progressive, innovative outlets in the U.S., she realizes now, was a different way to do media than she had learned in college and her early work life in Canada. She learned about data and analytics, but also how to serve a community of readers. She brought this knowledge back to Canada, editing for a Vancouver indie media start up, The Discourse, before coming to the realization that journalism should do more than describe and analyze. For Li, journalism is about solving problems.

Anya-Milana Sulaver, publisher of long form, investigative journalism based Peeps Magazine,  wanted a way to look deeper at problems – at the ground level, with people embedded in communities. She, too, felt like she wasn’t allowed to do real, anthropological investigations in the Canadian media ecosystem.

Sulaver is the daughter of a Serbian immigrant father and a mother who looked down upon her father’s ‘peasant’ roots. She found her mother’s view more dominant when she was first working in media in the 1990s when the war in the former Yugoslavia broke out. Sulaver wanted to tell stories from the perspective of the people on the ground, people she knew from childhood summers. She was told Canadians would not be interested.

So she went back to school. A lot. And came out with multiple degrees and an understanding of how media works and how academics work. In her start-up magazine, Peeps, she is fusing the two.

Lee Kong, Li and Sulaver all met at the Fifth Wave Initiative. They are all doing journalism that some in Canadian legacy media – even those who are focused on helping budding female entrepreneurs – don’t consider journalism. All three agree that they don’t care. They would rather move journalism into new forms than fit into the old ones – the old ones that either don’t include them or innovate fast enough. 

The Power of Pop Culture

“I think there are a lot of dismissive attitudes towards pop culture and its importance,” says Lee Kong, encapsulating the challenges of reporting serious journalism through the lens of culture.

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That’s what Lee Kong does. Every Friday, her newsletter delivers incisive takes on what is happening in check-out line magazines, and how they are more important to our lives than we think.

“If millions of people are paying attention to [pop culture] then it really behooves those of us who are trying to make sense of the world to pay attention to the same things,” Lee Kong says.

“People coming to news outlets are not just looking at what happened, but why they should care.”

Lee Kong has a gift for writing about the real issues beneath the celebrity veneer. She recently wrote about how western media outlets are positioning the invasion of Ukraine like a TV drama, about how people writing in prestigious newspapers and magazines are complaining their voices are stifled, and about how entertainment media is ignoring the abusive nature of Kanye West’s treatment of his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian.

The Kardashian story, says Lee Kong, is not a celebrity story. It’s a domestic violence story.

“I’m only talking about them ‘cause you know their names,” Lee Kong says in a Zoom interview. “They’re the clever trick. I really want us to think about the issues that these stories bring up.”

Lee Kong started Friday Things when she was passed over for an editor-in-chief job for a magazine for which she was working. She had worked up the ranks and was acting as the de-facto editor in chief after a few people had left.

“Everyone seemed to think I would get that job, and I didn’t get the job. I had a team of people I had been leading for months at that point.”

This sent her on a path of self-reflection about what women – and specifically women who are, like her, ‘An ethnically ambiguous person of color’ with roots in the Caribbean  – can and should expect from a journalism industry that centres a point of view that doesn’t include hers.

“If you wanted to drill down and say, ‘I want to know how many of our readers are racialized,’ then you would be told it would be racist to gather that information, so there would always be plausible deniability.”

Moving Toward Solutions

Li also wants to know who her readers are, which is why she’s including them in her journalism. She will not only be talking to them, but asking them to analyze problems and crowd-source solutions.

The Green Line will cover one long form feature or investigative story per week – starting in April – about a systemic problem facing Toronto, focusing on Gen Zs, Millennials and other under-represented communities

Their ‘Action Journey’ will start with an explainer breaking down the systemic problem they’re reporting on. The next week, they’ll post a long-form, interactive feature that reports local solutions to the problem. In week three, they’ll host a live town-hall event to crowd-source more solutions. And in week four, they’ll unpack those solutions with another written piece. You can follow all this on a website that takes you on a visual journey through the stories.

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On social, The Green Line will engage people with humor, which is why the main people Li has on her team are a comedian, an audience engagement manager, and a social media manager.

Li is clear that she and her team are not activists. They’re journalists, bringing people together and reporting on possible solutions.

“I believe in vetting all sources, reporting widely and fact checking,” she says. She is not, though, going to give space to something – like climate change denial – which is not true. She wants to solve problems, not drive clicks, using ‘values driven editorial framework’.

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Re-defining journalism

Sulaver is not going to hire a comedian to sell Peeps. She does, however, teach anthropologists how to write for a wider audience than their academic peers.

The anthropologists Peeps works with are in communities writing about specific topics or people. They are doing this through their universities, but Sulaver knew their stories often were lost in academic journals. She also knew that the people telling these intricate stories would not want to work with publishers who did not understand the research.

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The stories in Peeps can take up six months to tell. There’s the anthropologists’ first take, then there is the editing process that focuses their writing without losing the complexity. Sulaver said it can take up to five rewrites before a story is ready.

There’s also photography. Sulaver hires some of the best photographers in the world – and pays them well – to highlight the communities the writers are covering. Sometimes, she has found, the photographers who come from these communities don’t agree with the premise of the piece, or find differences when they interview people they photograph. With Peeps, Sulaver makes room for these disagreements, because they are part of the story, part of the search for truth.

The storytelling in Peeps resonates. First, the site is gorgeous. Sulaver is as intent on curating the pictures as she is making sure the writing is authentic. She also gets her writers to tell specific stories that have larger reverberations.

All three women want to make a difference in their worlds, and a difference in journalism. They are pushing against ways of thinking that say the stories they tell aren’t important, and their ways of telling them aren’t ‘correct’. Lee Kong, Li and Sulaver want to tell stories about people who don’t see themselves in the headlines, and who often aren’t deemed ‘newsworthy’.

They may just be changing the definition of journalism in the process.

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Publishers Note: Peeps, The Green Line and Friday Things are part of the Fifth Wave  Initiative, a year-round program offered by CFC Media Lab and its partners to support the growth and development of women entrepreneurs in the digital media sector in southern Ontario. All enterprise founders in the Fifth Wave community are selected for both their potential and commitment toward weaving intersectional feminist ideals of equity and fairness into sustainable and scalable business growth strategies. Fifth Wave Initiative is committed to minimum of 50% participation per cohort by members of underrepresented groups. The Fifth Wave is a LiisBeth ally sponsor at the Lighthouse level. Applications for Cohort 5 are open. Apply here

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The post The New Future of Journalism (It’s Not What You Think) appeared first on LiisBeth.

Working in Canadian media these days can feel like playing a real-life version of Survivor. It seems every quarter brings new buyouts, shuttered outlets, and more castaways. While times are challenging for all journalists, people of colour—already underrepresented—are getting squeezed even harder.

Earlier this week, a first joint report by the Canadian Association of Black Journalists (CABJ) and Canadian Journalists of Colour (CJOC) tackled the issue, highlighting why it’s finally time—even in these challenging times—for the country’s newsrooms to stop sweeping appallingly low diversity statistics under the rug and start acting on its recommendations to boost diversity.

The two organizations decided to work together on the report when they realized they shared the same concerns. And that, says Nadia Stewart, executive director of the CABJ, was, “Folks who felt they weren’t represented in the leadership in their newsroom, folks who were still encountering unpleasant experiences, folks who felt like their voice wasn’t heard.” When the heads of the two organizations began to talk, Stewart says, “Representation diversity was still the elephant in the room.”

With diversity and race issues regularly making front-page headlines in Canada and abroad, the industry’s own problem with racial representation had become even more ironic, if not downright comical. Last September, editors at the Vancouver Sun showed a deaf ear to the issue, publishing an op-ed that recommended Canada say, “Goodbye to diversity, tolerance, and inclusion,” then later apologized after many of the Sun’s own journalists denounced the op-ed on social media.

During the 2019 federal election, when Justin Trudeau’s blackface scandal erupted, an overwhelming number of journalists criticized the coverage and called for increased diversity in the newsroom, noting the first journalists to question Trudeau on the Liberal campaign plane were all white. Journalist Sunny Dhillon quit his Vancouver posting for The Globe and Mail when he wanted to write about that city’s lack of diversity on council—and was overruled by his bureau chief. In an essay, Journalism While Brown and When to Walk Away, Dhillon explained the “challenges journalists of colour can face in a lily-white industry” and said the solutions were “as obvious as they are unacted upon—hire more people of colour, hear their voices, elevate them to positions of power or prominence.”

Ironically, in recent years, US and international media have started hiring high-profile Black Canadians to cover race issues in Canada.

The goal of the joint report, called “Canadian Media Diversity: Calls to Action,” is meant to move issues of diverse inclusion forward “in a way that isn’t just paying lip service, but actually is actionable steps,” says Anita Li, co-founder of CJOC.

The CJOC has more than 600 members and launched as a Facebook group in October 2018, though Li says the conversations around race has been going on for years. The CABJ was founded in 1996 as a resource for Black journalists in Canadian media and was relaunched in 2018 with “renewed focus” to support young journalists. In the report, the two organizations lay out seven recommendations to improve diversity and create an “equitable media” within the country, which includes creating mentorship and scholarship opportunities for people of colour and self-reporting newsroom demographics. Unlike in the US, Canadian outlets often opt out of publishing such details so that it’s impossible to know how many people of colour work in a news organization, or what roles they play.

Diversity in a dying industry

Increasing diversity in Canada’s struggling news industry faces one seemingly insurmountable roadblock: how to increase representation in an industry that’s simply struggling to stay afloat? Over the last decade, Canadian media has been pummelled by declining advertising revenues and shrinking subscriber bases. A recent report from the Public Policy Forum found that, since 2008, more than 250 news outlets have either closed or reduced the services they offer, and advertising revenue—the lifeblood of most organizations—has all but dried up.

So, is it possible for newspapers and digital publications to increase diversity while facing the constant threat of collapse? Many experts say yes. In fact, the benefits of greater racial diversity in the newsroom has been proven over and over again, starting with a deeper and more authentic relationship with the communities they serve, leading to a more sustainable business model. In an industry suffering from declining readership, a diverse news staff could be what rights the ship.

However, the business case can’t be the only reason to boost diversity, explains Eva Salinas, the former managing editor of Open Canada. In her former role, she actively hired and supported diverse staff and says diverse journalists play an important role in a democratic society by highlighting the stories that originate in Canada’s diverse communities.

“Yes, there is a business case, but there’s also a business case for allowing immigration,” she explains. “That shouldn’t be the leading reason. It’s about equality and human kindness. I think that needs to still be the leading reason.”

Yet another obstacle in increasing diversity is the role unions can play in blocking and even ousting diverse workers during layoffs as they protect seniority over everything else. Given that it’s usually journalists of colour who are less likely to be in senior positions, they tend to be the first offered buyouts.

Thinking outside the box

In response, some newsrooms are getting creative in maintaining both headcount and diversity, says Brian Gibson, president of Unifor Local 2000. “We did do something different here in Vancouver. The members themselves did decide to take a 10 percent cut in the form of a day off every two weeks to prevent layoffs, so the diversity was preserved. But, it’s not 100 percent commonplace because, again, seniority is usually followed, and with the addition of these new folks they’re usually the first to go.”

Logically thinking, journalist shops without a union might find it easier to tackle the diversity debacle, but Gibson has found that not to be the case when working with the recently shuttered Star Vancouver office. “That group was fairly diverse, but our issue there with bargaining was, again, because people negotiate their own wages, the people of colour and women were the lowest paid there. One of our biggest bargaining issues was trying to bring those folks up and get everybody paid the same for the same work,” says Gibson.

In their report, the CABJ and COJC also strongly recommended that news outlets not only hire reporters of colour but create “leadership tracks” for journalists of colour and invest in their potential as future managers. “Current newsroom leaders should be proactive in seeking out and developing leaders of colour. These individuals should be promoted to occupy decision-making positions, such as assignment editors, senior and executive producers, managing editors, and news directors.”

Even as the CABJ and COJC were issuing their joint report, TorStar, which had a strong record of employing young, diverse journalists, announced it would close its StarMetro News offices across the country. Where those journalists will find work is impossible to tell, but they are at a disadvantage with little experience in a slowly shrinking industry.

The authors of the joint report concede that the industry’s problems can’t and won’t be solved on the recommendations of one report and that change won’t be easy, but the group remains united and focused on putting forward solutions. Says Stewart: “The time is now. I think the circumstances are ripe and I do think people are ready for change.”

The post News So White It’s Blinding appeared first on LiisBeth.

Athelstan Spilhaus Comic Strip, Illustrator: Gene Fawcett

PK’S VIEWPOINT 

On a hot summer July evening, a few members of the LiisBeth team (Lana, Geraldine, Champagne) and I went to see a screening of The Experimental City, a 2017 documentary about the Minnesota Experimental City (MXC) project.

The MXC was a 1960s technology-led city-building project that sought to solve urban problems of the day (excessive waste, pollution, automobile congestion, lack of parks) by building a full-size Jetsons city on appropriated land from scratch, using the latest technology sourced from around the world.

Its lead visionary—engineer, futurist, comic strip author, and dean of the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Technology Athelstan Spilhaus—imagined a city with underground garbage recycling, lots of open parks, wilderness and farms, automatic highways, moving sidewalks, and waterless toilets. Fuelled by enthusiasm for the possibilities, a cadre of like-minded engineers, designers including geodesic dome inventor Buckminster Fuller, a newspaper publisher, futurists, politicians, and corporate leaders all decided take the techtopian idea from comic to concrete.

Despite years and significant spending on designs, plans, and site scouting, in the end the project never put a single shovel—or tree—in the ground.

We were interested in learning about the MXC because we are in the midst of planning our September 29 Feminist City Walk and Talk, an event dedicated to examining feminist approaches to city building.

Turns out watching the film was time well spent on several levels. The MXC story is not only a cautionary tale about techtopian projects in general. It is also a story about the limitations of patriarchal leadership styles.

When Product Trumps Process

The MXC plan was envisioned as an innovation experiment. Its unproven ideas girded by emerging technologies required a 60,000-square-foot sandbox and 250,000 real people living its experience in order to try things out, iterate, and try again until market-ready scale-up versions could be implemented elsewhere—for a handsome sum.

MXC was, essentially, a minimum viable product. Its citizens (in this case) were early-stage adopters. The play? To create new jobs and wealth for Minnesota by selling the experiment’s spinoff products and intellectual property (IP) that would arise out of the project. Partners and advocates included federal and state governments, the University of Minnesota, and the 3M corporation. The project’s all-male leaders were able to raise $250,000 from the US federal government and $670,000 (equivalent to $8.4 million today) from businesses to invest in the project plan.

It all sounded exciting and promising. There was just one problem: where to put it.

Eventually the group found a site—an unincorporated township in rural Minnesota with fewer than 2,500 residents (back-to-landers and rural folk). The assumption was that these residents would be pushovers and would be thrilled to see 60,000 acres of their pristine natural environment turned into a city of the future for a quarter of a million dollars. The pitch? Think of the jobs! Think of the economic development! Think of what we could learn! Think of the economic potential! Think of the profits!

By now, this top-down sell story should start to sound familiar, especially if you have been following Toronto’s Sidewalk Labs‘ (this time the study cost $50 million) city-building project spearheaded by Alphabet (Google’s parent company).

As you know, Minnesota’s Experimental City was never built. They didn’t even get close. Why? As the documentary so clearly points out, its leaders and advocates prioritized product over process. They assumed a “trust us, we got this” and “father knows best” stance that was off-putting. Most importantly, they overlooked Mary Parker Follet’s 1920s feminist management wisdom by adopting a “power over” (exert authority) approach versus “power to” (develop agency and capacity to act in others) combined with “power with” (acting as expert heroes instead of initiators and sustainers of a collective process).

They also forgot Margaret Mead’s timeless lesson: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” This applies not just to those with power and influence, but also to those with little else but just cause, a point of view, and determination.

And what if, as feminist management scholar CV Harquail suggests, we shifted the eye of these stormy projects from a focus on economic development to a focus on citizen care?

Today, 80 percent of North Americans and 55 percent of humanity worldwide live in cities. We need to embrace both product and process innovations to make cities livable, sustainable, and safe. However, a patriarchal, top-down, corporate sales–oriented process that puts technology and corporate interests first is unlikely to succeed.

Projects like these, which involve a complex and large set of inter-independent stakeholders, require a deep understanding of the role of power, agency, co-creation processes, and fair and equitable distribution of benefits. These are all things feminist leaders know a thing or two about.

Lana, Geraldine, Champagne and I stayed for the panel session that followed which featured accomplished tech entrepreneur and out spoken Sidewalk Labs critic Saadia Muzaffar, and Sidewalk Labs supporter, Ken Greenberg, the former Director of Urban Design and Architecture for the City Toronto, author of Toronto Reborn, and adviser to Sidewalk Labs Toronto.

Trying to keep an open mind, and putting aside the fireworks examples of mansplaining that occurred, the panel discussion only served to confirm our views.

Patriarchal leadership styles which, by the way, know no gender, is like kryptonite when it comes to complex, multi-stakeholder projects. Next time, we say we go lighter on the techno-determinists and engineers, and a little heavier on the feminist management scholars and leaders who are superstars at process.

WHAATT? TORONTO’S FIRST-EVER FEMINIST CITY WALK & TALK?! HOLD THE DATE!

Feminism has shifted mindsets about gender roles and made us more aware of the role that power and force of systems play in shaping our lives. But what role has feminism and feminists played in shaping our cities? Would would a feminist city look like? How would decisions and policies be made if feminist values and practices were incorporated? What would the Scotiabank Arena look like if it were designed by a feminist architect?

These are just some of the themes that will be explored during the Feminist City Walk & Talk coming up in Toronto on September 29 from 2:00PM to 5:30PM. Join Denise Pinto, expert guests, LiisBeth, and Jane’s Walk TO for this unique walk and talk on current feminist issues, city building, and alternative futures while exploring and learning about key sites where feminist history was made in Toronto.

THIS WEEK ON LIISBETH 

Meet Victoria Claflin Woodhull, ca. 1866-1873, who was a feminist, serial entrepreneur, and US presidential candidate.

FIRST WOMAN TO RUN FOR PREZ

Was Hillary Clinton the first woman in the US to run for president? Nope.

That title belongs to badass suffragette leader Victoria Claflin Woodhull Martin (1838-1927).  Woodhull was a serial entrepreneur, newspaper editor, Wall Street stock trader, public speaker, women’s rights reformer, and fortune teller. She had three husbands, two children (one of whom was disabled), and her feminism advocated for free love and socialism.

What can feminist entrepreneurs and aspiring women-identified politicians learn from Woodhull? Turns out, a lot. 

This month on LiisBeth, check out new contributor Stephanie Newman’s truly fascinating piece on Woodhull from an entrepreneur’s perspective.

RISKY BUSINESS

Pramilla Ramdahani, Founder and CEO of Community Innovation Lab

Most startups don’t start off as high-growth enterprises. Growth is one goal, sure, but all businesses start from the bottom up. But bottom is a relative term. For abuse survivors and marginalized women, starting a business could mean working from a place of residual mental and physical effects of trauma, fear of publicity, possible ongoing threats, and little financial backing. But survivors also possess the much-needed entrepreneurial attributes of resilience, strength, and perseverance.

By 2020, 1,335 women, youth, senior entrepreneurs, and social entrepreneurs will have benefitted from initiatives at the Community Innovation Lab (Co-iLab).

What’s the Co-iLab difference? Participants are involved in the programming and design of the space. #cocreation

Michelle Davies spoke to Co-iLab’s founder Pramilla Ramdahani and reveals how Co-iLab is much more than an all-female accelerator. To get involved, or see if you’re a fit for The Refinery entrepreneurial program, check out the full story here.

EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT FEMINISM AND BUSINESS BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK 

CV Harquail’s new book, Feminism: A Key Idea for Business and Society, will get you to think differently about feminism’s relevance in business. But don’t just take our word for it—check out this review by Deloitte Professor in the Management of Growth Enterprises Dr. Barbara Orser. Orser has published over 100 academic and trade journals and knows the feminist entrepreneur space like a lioness knows the realities of the Savannah. She agrees it’s about time we have a book that succinctly explains why enterprises should be turning to feminist values and wisdom to transform business.

Read Orser’s review of the book here.

FEMINIST FREEBIE! 

Be the first to comment (substantively) on Orser’s review of Feminism: A Key Idea for Business and Society and receive a gratitude copy.

NEW SUPPORTS FOR WOMEN-LED SOCIAL ENTERPRISES IN ONTARIO 

Good news for women social entrepreneurs in Ontario! A new, unique program that will help diverse women-led social enterprises grow is set to launch in 2020. Read about the $3.6 million Canadian federal government announcement here.

The program endeavours to integrate Indigenous wisdom in its curriculum and approach. This is a first.

LIISBETH FIELD NOTES

MEET LIISBETH’S TWO INCREDIBLE NEW ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS:
GERALDINE CAHILL & ANITA LI

Geraldine Cahill, LiisBeth Advisory Board Member 2019

We are delighted that Geraldine Cahill has joined the Liisbeth Advisory Board! Cahill is the Director of UpSocial Canada, a social innovation agency first launched in Barcelona in 2010. She is also the co-author of Social Innovation Generation: Fostering a Canadian Ecosystem for Systems Change and chair of the Jane’s Walk Steering Committee, an annual global festival celebrating local knowledge and community connection.

Born in Australia, Cahill completed a BA in Media Studies at RMIT University and a BA in Film and Television from the Victorian College of the Arts. Her first media love was radio; she produced current affairs and women’s sports programs over several years at 3CR before moving to Canada and supporting the launch of a non-profit online news site, The Real News Network.

We are also thrilled to announce that Anita Li, consultant and former director of communities at The Discourse, has also joined our Advisory Board!

Anita Li, LiisBeth Advisory Board Member 2019

Li is also editor-in-chief of The Other Wave, a website dedicated to covering media from a multicultural perspective. Prior to that, Li served as senior editor at Fusion and as news director at Complex. She’s also held reporting and editing positions at media outlets across North America, including Mashable, Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, CBC, and CTV.

OUR AUGUST PLAYLIST: BOLD, BRAVE, UNAPOLOGETIC

Looking to discover feminist-leaning, female, trans, or queer-led bands? Not easy right? Turns out we see very little diversity represented on stages at live music venues. With initiatives like Gender Parity on Stage by Canadian Women Working in Music calling for music bookers to book 50 percent women-fronted bands, things may start to change for all women-identified genders that are under-represented on stage.

To help spotlight feminist bands, LiisBeth publishes playlists featuring tightly curated women-identified-led bands and singer/songwriters and songs that are blatantly about love, justice, and power.

Our latest August 2019 playlist serves up 10 songs by artists featured at this year’s Venus Fest, a feminist music festival created by Aerin Fogel that’s designed to showcase women-led, queer, and trans bands in Toronto.

FEMINIST FREEBIE!

Get your groove on and tell us what you think by commenting on the playlist here. First two people to leave a reply win two passes ($110 value) to Venus Fest in Toronto this September. #hellavalue

Photo Credit: Katherine Fung/The World

What is the definition of an enterprise?

According to the dictionary:
1. A project or undertaking that is especially difficult, complicated, or risky
2. Unit of economic organization or activity especially: a business organization
3. A systematic purposeful activity, i.e. digital media production is the main economic enterprise for visual artists
4. Or readiness to engage in daring or difficult action; showing initiative; being enterprising

What is a feminist enterprise?

All of the above along with express operational focus or mission related to social and gender justice.

So what is the feminist enterprise commons (FEC)?

A new online community where feminist entrepreneurs and changemakers who are building organizations, enterprises, or working on projects from around the globe can meet, share stories, tools, learnings, stress test new ideas, practices, source goods and services from each other, and above all, feel supported.

Why are we building it?

Elize Shirdel, feminist tech entrepreneur and long-time LiisBeth supporter, explains: “Feminism’s deep body of academic and grassroots work related to change-making and practice is an under-explored source of innovative ideas for founders and business leaders looking to truly advance social and gender justice. It’s great to finally have a place dedicated to exploring feminism in business plus learning about and sharing our experiences.”

The FEC will be a service provided to the LiisBeth community on a paid subscription basis. Stay tuned for more information in the next few weeks.

FEMINIST FREEBIE!

If you are on our list as a $10 monthly paying subscriber to LiisBeth by September 2019, you will be invited to receive a complimentary first three months!

Champagne Thomson (bottom left) and crew outside the public library in Peterborough, Ont., are bringing attention to the need for a new homeless shelter in their city.

IS HOMELESSNESS A FEMINIST ISSUE?

We think so. And it is not just a big-city issue either.

In a community of 78,777 where the housing vacancy rate is less than one percent, the rural city of Peterborough, Ont., struggles with establishing and funding shelters for those in need. Due to funding and location issues, the city recently closed its only barrier-free shelter on July 1, 2019. A temporary tent city was created to deal with the immediate need: a stop gap measure that is not ideal.

Few realize that women make up 50.1 percent of the under 16 homeless population in Canada, and 27.3 percent of the homeless population in Canada overall). These figures do not include women and women-identified people who experience temporary homelessness as a result of domestic violence.

Any entrepreneurial solutions to funding safe, barrier-free physical shelters out there? Let us know (email [email protected]). We would love to hear and write about them.

LIISBETH MAKES FEEDSPOT’S TOP 10 FEMINIST MAGAZINE LIST 

Play the video below to hear the sound of LiisBeth tooting our horn because we were voted as one of the Top 10 Feminist Magazines, Publications & Ezines To Follow In 2019 by Feedspot, an online RSS feed reader.

The Best Feminist Magazines are chosen from thousands of feminist magazines on the web using search and social metrics. Readers subscribe to these websites because they are actively working to educate, inspire, and empower themselves with frequent updates and high-quality information. Data will be refreshed once a week.

The post LIISBETH DISPATCH #54 appeared first on LiisBeth.