“It is an honour and a great experience for both our university and broader community to welcome and engage with such a renowned thinker, author and leader,” says Jennifer Currie, Shannon School of Business. “We are looking forward to the perspectives he will share on money, investments, and local food and the implications of this new way of thinking for community and economic development in Cape Breton.”
For more than ten years, Woody Tasch served as chairman of Investors’ Circle, a network of investors, family offices, and social purpose funds and foundations that invested $150 million in 230 early stage sustainability-promoting ventures and venture funds.
Inspired by his text, Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing As If Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered, published in 2009, the Slow Money Movement is bringing people together around a new conversation about money that is too fast, about finance that is disconnected from people and place, about how we can begin fixing our economy from the ground up starting with food.
In contrast to far-flung multi-national corporations and financial institutions that are too large to understand, small food enterprises are seen as comprehensible. They create jobs, promote cultural, ecological and economic diversity, and build robust local food systems. According to the Slow Money Movement, by looking at philanthropy and investment through the lens of food, soil and place, we can find new ways to rebuild trust and to support millions of small acts of entrepreneurial care.
Tasch’s visit is being presented in the context of community resilience. Community resilience examines the ability of our communities to provide for us in the future and to survive economic, political and natural instabilities that originate outside of our communities and are often beyond our control.
IDEAS: Powered by Passion, which has been dubbed the “Cape Breton TED”, seeks to encourage new attitudes, directions and thinking through speech and music. It aims to uncover the passions of our people through the sharing of their stories and ideas. [READ MORE WGO COVERAGE OF IDEAS: POWERED BY PASSION HERE]
Tuesday’s event will be hosted by Cape Breton University MBA Associate Professor, Doug Lionais. Panelists include Rankin MacSween, President of New Dawn; Jeremy White, Owner of Big Spruce Brewery; and Alicia Lake, Manager of Baddeck Farmer’s Market. Musicians Jason Rudderham, Ben Fury and Kyle Legere will open the event.
Doors open at 6:30pm at the New Dawn Centre for Social Innovation (former Holy Angels High School). Admission is free for all talks in the series. Attendees are encouraged to bring a friend, a smile, and their favourite mug to fill with complimentary organic, fair trade coffee or tea.
