Final Note from the Lab Team

Hosting the Local Economic Development Lab has been a transformative experience for program staff, graduate students, and parent organizations Ecotrust Canada and RADIUS SFU. We are proud of the work we’ve done with community over the past three years, and we are incredibly excited about the assets and resources the DTES community now has to move forward. In particular, employment services and social enterprise groups have so much more cohesion than just a few years ago, and clarity in an approach rooted in cross-sector collaboration and systems change.

We are grateful for the trust our partners placed in us, and their leadership in continuing this work. In many respects the idea of a time-bound program was an experiment in itself, seeking to build new strengths and networks without competing for resources with existing community organizations. LEDlab sunsetting in line with the original design is in many ways a sign of success.

In July 2018 the LEDlab partnership between Ecotrust Canada and RADIUS SFU will reach its planned conclusion and LEDlab staff will move on to new positions. Kiri Bird is moving into a full time role with RADIUS SFU as Associate Director. Ara Beittoei will be applying his skills in data analysis and public engagement to climate solutions with a local consulting firm. We all remain committed neighbours in the DTES, with relationships that will long outlast this initiative.

Our webiste will remain active through 2020 and knowledge products will gradually be transitioned to partners’ web archives. We encourage our audience to use and share the publications on our website as much as desired, to support and enhance your work.

This work has been challenging and not always easy, but it’s been extremely fruitful and all of us on the LEDlab team can genuinely say we’ve been changed for the better through this experience. We look forward to continuing to design innovative approaches to complex social and economic challenges in the future and to contributing to social innovation lab practice in BC and Canada.

The LEDlab Team,

Kiri Bird, Ara Beittoei, Shawn Smith, Jean Pogge

LEDlab Sunsets and Celebrates with Our Community Partners

On June 14th we had the pleasure of gathering with our community partners for one last time to reflect on and celebrate the collaborative work that we have shaped together in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside over the past 3.5 years. The Sunset Celebration also served as a ceremony to formally close the LEDlab.

Community partners, organizations, municipal staff, funders, lab student alumni and supporters joined us to remember and celebrate key moments, people and pivot points along our shared journey, listen to stories about the emergent visions of community leaders, and to collectively set intentions for the future.

We were honoured to have Vanessa Richards, Director of Community Engagement at 312 Main, facilitate the event. Building on the metaphor of the tree, we were asked to remember the seeds and roots of our work (histories, context, initial community supporters, funders), the trunk (our collective projects over the years) and the fruits of our labour (successes and impacts).

Program Manager, Kiri Bird, as well as a few of our attendees shared their stories and their thoughts on where we are going as a community in the DTES. Speakers were asked to respond to the questions: Where there is appetite for change? What feels possible and ripe with momentum? A few patterns emerged from this discussion:

Working relations are changing

• The boundaries between the terms community worker and a peer worker are being redefined as we strive to include more people with lived experience in community leadership roles.
• DTES residents with lived experience of poverty are being recognized not just for their stories, but also for their knowledge, expertise, and professional skills particularly around community organizing, building networks, and marketing (for example, with the Binners’ Project and Eastside Works).
• DTES residents are being invited onto boards of organizations and into wider discussions about organizational strategy (for example, through the The DTES Neighbourhood House Let’s Speak Up program)

It’s an exciting time in the DTES for positive impact to continue to happen

• There is alignment at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels of government to address poverty. Issues and discussions around housing, employment, health, affordability and the social determinants of health are converging to better understand the factors that influence economic opportunities from a wider perspective. Employment is being recognized as more than just making money, but also the opportunity to get connect with and contribute to your community and neighbourhood. The government’s definition of work is changing.
• There is new energy in the community. Young people from the neighbourhood and beyond are seeking ways to contribute to address the needs and desires of the DTES community. There’s a listening for what is useful.
• There are more tangible community innovation hubs, such as 312 Main and Eastside Works, that are creating new spaces and enthusiasm to connect with others and to experiment and try new things.

Looking ahead, there are ample opportunities for the DTES community to continue on in the spirit of the lab to weave networks, build partnerships, think systemically, and put tangible projects on the ground. 312 Main, Eastside Works, and Carnegie Centre in particular will serve as critical hubs to achieve these goals.

One final reflection from our event was the recognition of the importance of building relationships, not just in a professional or organizational context, but between the individuals who work so closely together in this community. Participants in the Sunset Celebration were invited to join in a final song together, before ceremoniously casting tree seeds over a busy downtown street from above. The invitation of this gathering was to remember that we sometimes need to enter a different type of space to relate to each other in new ways, let go of old habits, and co-create new realities.

We are immensely grateful for all the individuals and organizations that have made our work possible. Without you the LEDlab would not have beared fruit. In closing, we hope to have left fertile ground for new seeds to grow.

Thank you to Lani Braun for capturing beautiful photos at the Sunset Celebration.

What does it mean to close LEDlab?

Kiri Bird is Program Manager for the Local Economic Development Lab. In our third and final year, Kiri’s work is focused on institutional and government relations, knowledge mobilization, building capacity for social innovation and systems change, and overseeing the sunset of LEDlab in June 2018. 

As Winter releases its hold on Vancouver, slowly giving way to Spring, so too do we begin moving the Local Economic Development Lab towards its planned close in June of 2018. This week, our final cohort of graduate students reports out to Urban Core and other community partners on the results of their eight-month internships. At the end of April, Austin and Nicole will move into full time roles with their project supervisors, EMBERS and Buy Social respectively, while David is off on an adventure to Rwanda, where he will continue to explore social entrepreneurship.

As Ara and I prepare for a period of reflecting, reporting, and celebration, it seems there’s a curious paradox to be winding down LEDlab, while the world around us comes alive at the very same time.

But what does it mean to ‘close down’ a social innovation lab?

Over the past six months, we’ve been working internally and with our partners to understand: what are the unique contributions and types of value being created by the lab? And how can we ensure those contributions are being adopted, institutionalized, or held in some way by the DTES community moving forward?

With succession planning in mind, we set about codifying the core offerings of LEDlab: student internships, interagency coordination, strategic facilitation, social innovation workshops, etc. We have thoughtfully woven these functions into grant proposals, job descriptions, and the mandates of some of our partners including Eastside Works, Exchange Inner City, and Urban Core. We’ve also played a pivotal role in helping to resource these organizations (by supporting grant writing, making introductions to private donors, etc.) so that they can move forward the work that we’ve collectively shaped over the past few years from a place of stability.

In January and February we ran a workshop series inviting 40+ organizations to learn about ‘systems change’, supported by Vancouver Foundation. Our goals were for organizations in the DTES to be better equipped to engage with complex challenges through experimental approaches, to provide a space for reflection and system-level sensing, and also, to feel empowered with the vocabulary of social innovation and systems change now being used by many Canadian funders.

From workshops to fundraising, to recruitment and hiring, we’re trying our very best to ensure that the work that may have started ‘inside’ the lab is able to thrive and survive in the DTES community beyond our involvement.

While all this work is appreciated by our partners, another message came through loud and clear in the impact report research that our Developmental Evaluator, Steve Williams, led in 2018. That is, the ability of LEDlab to identify and respond to gaps and emergent opportunities, without ego, and outside of an organizational mandate, is a unique value that will be missed once we close.

I don’t have an answer for this, but I personally feel heavy under the weight of knowing how hard it is to resource and find the right type of weaver who can dance between the tangible and the abstract, knowing when to lead, and when to step back. It takes contextual knowledge. It takes relationships and trust. There’s not a hard deliverable to ‘sell’ to a funder. The role of network weaving is too often undervalued and underestimated, and we need to find a better way of recognizing and resourcing this work in our communities.

But another way of looking at the work moving forward in the DTES is through a lens of strengths. Last week Ara and I met with a wise woman, Vanessa Richards, Director of Community Engagement at 312 Main and an incredible community organizer and weaver herself. She reminded us to make our ‘closing’ more of an ‘offering’, one which shines a light on what’s glowing, juicy, vibrant, flourishing, and coming alive.

What’s alive and ripe with possibility in Vancouver, B.C. and Canada is activism and an appetite for change. There is momentum and openness at all three levels of government for poverty reduction. This is significant! There’s a real opportunity for an ambitious social policy agenda in B.C. There’s 312 Main, the largest coworking space in Canada, over 100,000 sq ft, with a mandate of social and economic development, opening at the corner of Main and Cordova. There’s Eastside Works, a project that has been in the making for over two years, taking in clients and finding creative ways to recognize and enhance skills and find meaningful sources of income. So it’s not a time to feel scarce, or to feel loss. It’s a time to feel hopeful.

I’m proud of the work we’ve done the past three years, and I’m incredibly excited about the assets and resources the DTES community has to move forward with. In particular, social enterprise and employment services groups have so much more cohesion than a few years ago, and clarity in approach that is rooted in cross-sector collaboration and systems change. LEDlab closing isn’t about succession planning, it’s about success.

Over the years I’ve written about the importance of trust. We asked for trust when we first starting working in the neighbourhood. And by consistently showing up and creating value, we earned that trust. We also sought explicitly to build trust amongst our partners. Now, I can see that trust is again needed. Trust in ourselves, that we have the opportunity and the ability to advance the work started and to see it through. We got this.

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The Policy Position Statement linked below was produced by Urban Core in collaboration with member organizations the Local Economic Development Lab and Exchange Inner City. February 2018. 

Urban Core Poverty Reduction Strategy Submission

Urban Core is a volunteer-run network of nonprofits, businesses, and individuals who deliver social services and are committed to supporting a continuum of economic strategies that provide a sustainable livelihood and improved incomes for Vancouver Downtown Eastside residents and beyond. Many members of Urban Core are formal partners with the provincial or municipal government in their work and serve British Columbians who require Income Assistance (IA) and employment services. We offer the following submission to the Provincial Poverty Reduction Strategy Consultations on reforming IA and the Employment Program of BC (EPBC) based on this experience. Urban Core members support the recommendations of the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition and Raise the Rates and present our recommendations as complementary.

For many in British Columbia, attaining economic self-sufficiency is an extended process due to health and education challenges. Existing IA programs and the EPBC do not account for this reality within their inflexible requirements, often removing supports at critical junctures, and denying non-Employment Insurance (EI) eligible clients access to certain training programs. For those whose economic selfsufficiency is temporarily or indefinitely beyond reach, multiple barriers prevent access to relevant income supports. The eligibility requirements of specific IA programs such as Persons With Disabilities (PWD) or Persons with Persistent Multiple Barriers (PPMB) present further obstacles for some of British Columbia’s most marginalized applicants.

Despite the best efforts of service providers, IA workers and WorkBC contract holders, the existing systems are not working for many of the people who need them most. This submission outlines a number of recommendations for BC IA and employment programs. These recommendations address the issues outlined above and provide pathways for government to support British Columbians in their ongoing effort to achieve stability and self-sufficiency, contribute to community prosperity and produce savings to government in health and emergency interventions.

Recommended Actions

• Improve the income assistance application process
• Strengthen community supports for applying to income assistance
• Improve access to more supportive income assistance categories such as Person with Disabilities (PWD) and Person with Persistent Multiple Barriers (PPMB)
• Commit to continual service improvement consulting recipients of income assistance
• Develop a new evidence informed income assistance distribution framework that emphasizes convenience and community wellbeing
• Remove earning exemptions limits for PWD and PPMB clients
• Eliminate the application of the two year financial independent test
• Reform the Employment Program of BC to reflect the nuance and flexibility of today’s workforce
• Increase support to social enterprises and non-profits that are filling gaps in Ministry employment service provision
• Recognize and embrance the full Income Generation Continuum
• Develop new ways to measure success that prioritize wellbeing and stability

Review the full Urban Core Policy Position Statement and List of Signatories.

For media requests and inquiries please contact cedcoordinator(at)ledlab.ca.

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The Growth of the Binners’ Project

Kiri Bird is founding Program Manager for the Local Economic Development Lab. In our third and final year, Kiri’s work is focused on institutional and government relations, knowledge mobilization, building capacity for social innovation and systems change, and overseeing the sunset of LEDlab in June 2018. 

Binners Project has been a close community partner of the LEDlab since the lab was first initiated in 2015. A binner is someone who collects redeemable containers and other things from bins to sustain their livelihood and to divert waste from landfills. LEDlab has placed two graduate students with the Binners’ Project and we continue to collaborate at various committees working to create a more inclusive economy in the DTES. Recently, I sat down with Anna Godefroy, Director of Binners’ Project, to catch up on their progress to date.

Where has the binners project come from? Where is it going?

Binners’ Project came from the need to regroup people with a common interest around the activity of binning. We were meeting once a month. The initial stage was just to hear the binners, to understand them more, to help them connect amongst each other. It started with very simple and humble goals.

Very quickly, once we recognized the needs we decided to act. Those needs were decreasing stigma and generating more income, and getting more stability in people’s lives. We’ve done that through organizing binning.

Where we are now, we offer capacity building through employment opportunities. We are part of the Tides Canada shared platform – which means we’re under their charitable status but we also have a number of  social enterprise-modelled programs. I think it will remain like that – but there’s a pull in each direction – the social enterprise and the charity.

You’ve grown a lot in the last year! Can you say more about that?

We’ve grown immensely! We started with two (full-time) volunteers and a small group of volunteer binners, maybe 8. Now we engage with an average of 50 binner members every week. We are 9 staff, which includes 6 binners. We have interactions with more than 300 binners every year.

We have two social enterprise modeled programs: a back of house waste sorting service, and a public education program that we run at events. In 2017, through our work, over $109,000.00 went into the pockets of binners. Requests for public waste education at events tripled in 2017!

Increasingly, we receive speaking and public representation requests too. Last year, we brought binners and staff to represent the organization or themselves and their lived experience at about 40 conferences, panels, and public speaking events. Public speaking offers a unique opportunity to build our members’ capacity. The binners love to get out of the neighbourhood, meet new people, and talk about their binning work. This contributes to decreasing the stigma attached to survival activities like binning.

What do you think is responsible for the growth you’ve experienced?

Everyone, our team has worked really hard, including Tides’ Canada’s staff. But the binners, especially the core team, have trusted us, and that trust was critical to our success.

We’ve also had great partners. The rapid growth of Binners Project is because of the support of organizations like the LEDlab, UBC Learning Exchange, and the Greater Vancouver Food Bank. But we’ve also had incredible clients – The PNE, RADIUS SFU, Car Free Day – these are our champions in the sense that they were open to test our services, they allowed us to innovate, to grow, and to sometimes fail and incorporate feedback. Now we have better systems, better offerings, and better value to offer future clients. I think there’s a lot of potential for our social enterprise models moving forward.

What are you most proud of the last year?

I’m most proud of our ability to build binners’ capacity. I’m seeing that the coaching we’ve done with our members is paying off. Many of our members are more stable in their life, they’re more professional when working with us, they’re able to plan their lives, and to see how their future fits into this community.

I love when we’re able to “activate” people’s capacity. When we actually take the time to assess and understand people’s abilities, they become strong, energized and therefore are able to better contribute to our programming. People’s abilities are too often underestimated in the Downtown Eastside. Often all that is needed is a bit of time investment upfront – but very quickly we see the results in dedicated and passionate staff and volunteers. Through our efforts we’ve been able to engage binners in strategy and governance positions. We’re not just hiring binners to do manual work – they are core to our organization and its future.

I think that’s what differentiates you from many organizations. What are some best practices you’ve learned along the way about engaging binner members in leadership roles?

We make sure we always compensate people for their time no matter what. So whether that means training, doing a small task for the project, or representing the project – like talking to the media or participating in local community development work – stipends are always paid by Binners’ Project. In order to make this happen, we build a line item into every budget. If you want to make sure it gets done, it needs to be in the plan, and it needs to be in the budget. Building capacity is the job. We are lucky that some funders, City of Vancouver, Vancouver Foundation, for example, welcome capacity building as part of our core offering.

The other thing is our coaching practice. I have a teaching background which helps me a lot in my work. We’re always trying to figure out how to bring out the best in people.

Instead of focusing on issues, we train our staff to focus on capacities, concrete goals, and outcomes that our members can accomplish. We track goals, we celebrate small victories. For some reason our members love clapping to the good news during our weekly meetings! We’ve been working this way intuitively in the past, but we need to figure out how to build more standard processes around this so that we can scale. That will be part of our work plan moving forward.

Well I look forward to seeing your thought leadership in this space! I think you’ve developed some really strong practices would be beneficial for other grassroots organizations. Thanks for speaking with me, Anna. It’s been a pleasure!

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Policy Engagement for Systemic Change

Kiri Bird is Program Manager for the Local Economic Development Lab. In our third and final year, Kiri’s work is focused on institutional and government relations, knowledge mobilization, building capacity for social innovation and systems change, and overseeing the sunset of LEDlab in June 2018. 

Recently, my role as Program Manager has been focused on ensuring that the research and system mapping work that the Local Economic Development Lab has led over the past three years is mobilized to create impact in the DTES community and beyond. In particular, we’re focused on sharing what we’ve learned about creating pathways out of poverty through changes to British Columbia’s income assistance and employment programs. Our interest in policy and legislative change stems from our analysis that all the low-barrier employment in the world isn’t going to reduce poverty unless we can move people more easily on and off of assistance, and address underlying fear and mistrust in government through steady improvements to social policy.

Back in May 2016, we held an event in partnership with Urban Core, where we brought together policymakers and social enterprise employers for an initial conversation about barriers to work for people on welfare and disability.

Some of the key takeaways from our May 2016 event were:

• There are substantial knowledge gaps, in terms of what benefits, supplements, services and programs are actually available through the Ministry, and how to navigate the complex and nuanced income assistance system.
• That ‘earnings exemptions’ (the amount of income that assistance recipients can earn from employment without affecting their benefits) might be unintentionally creating barriers to more frequent and stable employment, which employers suggested are factors that make people more employable.
• Overall people in the DTES want to work, but are not necessarily looking for a 40-hour per week job.
• That social enterprise employers are attempting to fill the gaps in Ministry service provision.
• It also became apparent that the Ministry had an interest in working with the community to enhance social impact hiring and labour market attachment in the DTES.

In the Summer of 2016, LEDlab and Potluck Café co-hired a public policy research assistant to dig deeper into the challenges of working on income assistance. From that work came our infographic and poster ‘On Income Assistance, Can Work’ and a ‘Challenge Brief’.

The Challenge Brief, which illustrates the nuanced and interrelated challenges of income assistance, suggests that:

• People who are on income assistance or disability assistance in the DTES need more support transitioning into employment because it is just too risky for them to lose their assistance.
• People that are deemed employable in the DTES need better and timelier recognition of Persons with Persistent Multiple Barriers status because many are struggling on basic social assistance and face multiple barriers to employment.
• Social enterprise employers need accessible and understandable information about income assistance policy and legislation because they are acting as advocates for their employees who struggle to access and navigate the system.
• Alternative models of employment services and training programs, including those offered by social enterprises, need flexible funding because the current funding model does not allow them to adequately provide services that meet the unique needs of the diverse DTES population.
• The Ministry of Social Development and [Poverty Reduction] must better recognize non-traditional, flexible and/or community-based employment and volunteer options for income assistance recipients of the DTES as part of continuum of employment strategies for people facing barriers to stability.

Since the Fall of 2016, equipped with a far deeper understanding about existing legislative barriers to working on income assistance, we have been engaging community and government around possible policy recommendations, primarily through Urban Core’s Legislative Change committee. In early November, LEDlab hosted two Directors from the policy and innovation branch of the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction for a meeting with social enterprise employers to give input into how income assistance programs might be redesigned to support and enhance low barrier labour force attachment. A transcript from that meeting is available here.

With the recent election of the NDP-Green government in BC, Minister Simpson has been mandated to complete a Poverty Reduction strategy in 2018, with legislated targets and timelines. Official consultations are beginning this month in Victoria with community meetings happening throughout the province in the first quarter of 2018. This important process owes in no small part to the work of advocacy groups across the province including the BC Poverty Reduction Strategy Coalition and Raise the Rates.

As the Poverty Reduction Strategy Coalition put it in their latest email communication ‘Now’s Our Chance’. LEDlab will be supporting our various community partners and networks to prepare for the Poverty Reduction Strategy Consultations, bringing forward our shared perspective on necessary changes to income assistance and employment programs. We also support and endorse the holistic approach and recommendations of the BC Poverty Reduction Strategy Coalition. As our three year initiative in Vancouver’s DTES prepares to sunset in June of 2018, we must do all that we can in the months ahead to ensure that the collaborative infrastructure and knowledge gained through our work can be translated and activated in this unique moment in time to achieve long-term systemic change.

For recommendations on how the Local Economic Development Lab can be of service to Poverty Reduction efforts in BC, please contact kiri@ledlab.ca.

Also, you can send a message directly to the BC government right now if you have something to say about poverty reduction in our province.

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Exchange Inner City: New Name, Big Vision, Next Steps

LEDlab Manager, Kiri Bird, interviewed Exchange Inner City Director, Steven Johnston, about Exchange’s new name, growth, and vision for 2018. Read their transcribed interview below.

Exchange Inner City, formerly CEDSAC or the Community Economic Development Strategic Action Committee, is a community backbone organization that works with DTES residents, CED actors and policy makers to build a more vibrant and inclusive local economy. Exchange was originally formed as co-creation committee to support the development of the DTES CED Strategy.

Thanks for taking the time to speak with me, Steve, on the record! A lot has happened for Exchange this year and I’m excited to have you share your updates with our readers. 

First off, tell us about the re-brand. What is the meaning of your new name? 

Our new name came about after a lot of conversation with our membership. Although the previous name, CEDSAC (which stood for Community Economic Development Strategic Action Committee), spoke directly to the work we do, the name was lengthy and cumbersome to say and explain! We decided to replace it with Exchange Inner City for several reasons. One, Exchange speaks to the role we play convening residents, policy makers and the business community in an effort to shape policy, develop and launch innovative community economic development projects and share information and learning. We facilitate the exchange of ideas and points of view to create communities where everyone is included and can express themselves. The addition of Inner City keeps our work grounded in place. We are directly connected to Vancouver’s high priority neighbourhoods. Finally, the name allows us to grow and replicate our work in other communities. For example, we could provide backbone support in Surrey under the name ‘Exchange Surrey’. Exchange describes what we do and the location ensures the work remains grounded in community.

What work or moments are you most proud of from you work in 2017? 

We’ve accomplished quite a bit in 2017. Several accomplishments stand out, I’m not sure I can narrow it to just one. I’m proud of securing funding to continue our work into 2019. This allows the projects we’ve initiated to continue and grow. I’m also proud of work on the Locals Card, a project that works with local businesses to find finds way to provide community members with affordable goods and services and other incentives. We already have twenty confirmed participating businesses and we’re recruiting more every day. I’m also proud of our growth. We now have over 50 members representing a diverse group of stakeholders and we’re still growing!

Speaking of funding, you’ve recently been awarded $50,000 from the City of Vancouver and two years of support at $75,000 from Vancouver Foundation. What does this money allow you to do in 2018? 

This funding affords us the opportunity to redirect our efforts into project development, community engagement and other emergent opportunities. Having a runway of secured funding means we can focus more of our attention on initiatives such as the Locals Card, our social procurement roundtable, and our advocacy work around poverty reduction at municipal and provincial levels. Finding funding for work like ours is challenging. Often, funders prefer to support discrete projects with defined outcomes and timelines. It’s challenging to find support for backbone organizations. Our need is support for core operations. It’s the staff that make the connections and support our members to effectively align their capacity to achieve a collective impact. In 2018 we hope to continue to demonstrate the value of our community backbone working model and shift the way foundations and other donors consider supporting a whole ecosystem of actors to create systemic change.

Where are the greatest opportunities for Exchange this year? Possible risks? 

I think the greatest opportunity for Exchange Inner City will be influencing the Community Benefit Agreement attached to the St. Paul’s Hospital development. We know the relocation of the hospital has the potential to accelerate gentrification in the Inner City. We believe a comprehensive and well thought out CBA policy will mitigate some of these effects and ensure the development creates prosperity for all community members. As a network organization, I think one potential risk we need to be cognizant of is the potential for members to assume that the work is getting done without their participation and for their attention to drift. We need to ensure that our work is meaningful and engaging to our members so that it is not only staff but our members who continue to drive our work.

In a community like the DTES, how do you balance the urgent needs of residents with some of the more long-term goals for example securing Community Benefit Agreements, projects which could take years? 

I think we can balance these needs in a couple of ways. One is by ensuring that residents have a leadership role in all of our work. By engaging residents in CBA policy discussions and development we create ways for community to be engaged in otherwise abstract or distant policy work. Even though these developments can take years, having residents involved throughout the process allows them to see shape how their community can be positively changed through development and share information and updates in a timely fashion with other residents. Exchange Inner City has also launched a number of quick start projects, like the Locals Card. This means we have active and more immediate work happening that complements some of our longer term objectives.

I know have discussed this a lot, but how would you describe the relationship between LEDlab and Exchange Inner City? How does LEDlab sunsetting in 2018 help or hinder your work? 

LEDlab will be missed! The Lab has been a leader in mobilizing community resources, making connections and kick-starting and supporting innovative groups like Exchange Inner City and Urban Core. LEDlab was instrumental in supporting Exchange during its initial startup phase and continued to provide support after staff was hired. LEDlab has also continued to make connections between policy makers and other stakeholders with Exchange Inner City and aligned some of it’s work with Exchange’ key projects and activities. This has increased the overall efficacy of our work. LEDlab has attained a measure of political capacity that will be hard to replace!

Well, that is very kind! At the same time, I know that our shared vision is in great hands with the diverse and active membership of Exchange Inner City. Last but not least, where can folks go in the future for updates on your work? 

Our old website cedsac.org is still active. There you can find our newsletter sign up, which is the best place for  up to date info on Exchange Inner City. In the future, our old website will redirect to a new domain reflecting our new name and brand.

Thanks again, Steve, and I looking forward to what 2018 has in store for Exchange Inner City! 

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