riverdalehub

Social Entrepreneurship at Riverdale Hub

Social Entrepreneurship

Inspiring Innovation through Social Entrepreneurship

The Riverdale Hub in the east end of Toronto houses Free Spirit @ Riverdale Hub, Riverdale Gallery, unique Event and Workspaces, Community Gardens and Work-based Training Programs.

Our innovative space has been developed to inspire social entrepreneurship, driving innovation and building community capacity through various initiatives and collaborative opportunities.

Land and Allyship Acknowledgement

We acknowledge that the Riverdale Hub is situated on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit.

As settlers, newcomers, refugees, and Indigenous peoples, we have all been invited into this treaty in the spirit of peace, friendship, and respect. We are also mindful of broken treaties that persist across ‘Turtle Island’ today and recognize our responsibilities as Treaty people to engage in a meaningful, continuous process of truth and reconciliation with all our relations.

What we now refer to as Canada was also built on the labour of many immigrant and migrant communities. From the transcontinental railroad to farming and food production, the country heavily relied (and continues to rely) on the talent, skill, and hard work of racialized people. In exchange, many of them are denied residence, and they continue to go through punishing immigration experiences and perpetuating racial disparities.

We remember those who came here involuntarily, particularly those brought to these lands as a result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery. In support of the Riverdale Hub’s ongoing efforts to confront anti-Black racism, we pay tribute to those ancestors of African origin and descent.

We continue our allyship with members of 2SLGBTQ+ communities across the GTA and stand with them against expressions of hate and exclusion.

Our Vision

Riverdale Hub provides a working model of innovative social entrepreneurship, environmental sustainability, and community flourishing. We strive to create an inclusive space that welcomes everyone, and encourages people to work together for progressive social change and action.

Social Entrepreneurship
Social Entrepreneurship

Our Mission

  1. Make the Riverdale Hub fully accessible to equity-deserving groups and our community.
  2. Provide work-based learning and support social enterprise development to help equity-deserving groups and individuals flourish.
  3. Create social enterprises that generate wealth and wellbeing with and for the community.
  4. Offer co-working and event space to our community.
  5. Revitalize our community through collaborative partnership development.
  6. Operate an art gallery where the artwork of equity-deserving groups is valued, promoted and showcased.

Our Purpose

The Riverdale Hub works together with equity-deserving groups and individuals to help them flourish.1

Our Values

We nurture and foster values of creativity, equity, inclusion, social justice, environmental sustainability, and community flourishing.

1Excerpt from John R. Ehrenfeld’s book, The Right Way to Flourish – Reconnecting to the Real World (2019): Flourishing represents, in part, the realization of the biological potential inherent in the genetic makeup of human and other species. For human beings, flourishing includes an additional two-part, existential dimension: personal wholeness and social coherence. The first embodies the flowering of the authentic self—the unique, meaningful being that one creates by marching to one’s own drummer. The second pertains to the social side of human beings, reflecting behavior within the panoply of institutions that guide everyday life. Flourishing was central to Aristotle’s concepts of human beings. Flourishing, as the normative vison or driver of cultural institutions, is preferable to reductionist metrics, like gross domestic product (GDP). It is the right vision to pull humankind toward a sustainable and desirable future. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780429282331-2/power-flourishing-john-ehrenfeld

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