Green Students Fundraising Gets Approved with the Toronto District School Board

Social innovation is so often found in the small changes - the small shifts that can result in massive breakthroughs. So, is this what social innovation looks like...???

Today Cory Berman, President of Green Student Fundraising - www.greenstudents.ca, popped into my office to tell me that they had just been approved to sell their CFL's and other green products as fundraisers in Toronto's schools. Yeah! So, what does this mean?

For me, this is a small bureaucratic breakthrough that is part of market transformation. Every school year, as a mom of two, I receive piles of flyers asking me to buy products that will also be a fundraiser for my school... I leaf through catalogues and I am basically bombarded with products that I kind of feel guilted into buying to support the school.

Green Students Fundraising is a great way to make money for the schools and make environmental change at the same time... how clever to sell parents compact fluorescent lights and to get them to start switching out their incandescent bulbs instead of useless junk that is just going to find its way into the garbage.

This is what social innovation looks like - yes, the win-win idea of selling green products as school revenue generators is great, but for me, the fact that the TDSB has approved GSF to operate in the schools may actually be even more significant. For with this act, we are seeing small shifts in the market place. We are seeing large institutions working in small ways to create markets for sustainability. How cool is that? : )

Social innovation = small shifts in the structures.