Meet the Social Ventures Zone’s Fall 2023 Incubation Cohort
The SVZ’s latest cohort aims to tackle social problems ranging from equitable employment all the way to Canada’s growing news deserts.
This October, the Social Ventures Zone welcomed a brand new cohort of ventures into the SVZ incubation program. The six incubated social ventures, selected after a highly-competitive round of applications, represent a wide variety of social issues and innovative solutions. From popcorn to local news, meet the newest class of the Social Ventures Zone.
Comeback Snacks
Comeback Snacks is a specialty popcorn company that aims to challenge the status quo. Founded by Emily O’Brien, Comeback Snacks came to life after Emily was sentenced to a federal prison term, beginning her mission to transform herself and make her time in jail as meaningful as possible. Having fostered an entrepreneurial career before her sentence, Emily developed the idea for Comeback Snacks to create mouth watering popcorn flavours, inspired by her experience of it being the perfect social snack to bring her and her fellow inmates together. Aware of the hardships of being incarcerated, Emily is driven to help remove the stigma surrounding people with prior convictions, as well as connect them with opportunities for reintegration through training, empowerment and education.
Dream Counsellor
Dream Counsellor, founded by Anindya Auveek, is currently in the R&D-stage, aiming to tackle barriers to employment faced by individuals with ASD. Research shows the main three groups of facilitators for employment within this group are Job Search Support, Soft-skill Enhancement and Job Fit. Dream Counsellor aims to provide all three services through a holistic, self-contained platform that offers individualised services for every user, while also partnering with existing organizations and services. Anindya is driven by a desire to remove the roadblocks in the employment process and unlock opportunities for all.
Laughing Cat Productions
Laughing Cat Productions, founded by Emily Schooley, is a media production company creating award-winning, women-driven original media content that is bold, intersectionally inclusive, and forward-thinking. Laughing Cat aims to tell stories that centre the experiences of people whose voices and bodies are still proportionally under-represented in the mainstream media landscape, embodying the belief that everyone deserves a seat at the table, that all bodies deserve to be substantially represented in media, and that all voices deserve to be heard. Laughing Cat is also proudly the first (and so far only) known production company in Canada who has made body diversity and intersectional inclusion an integral part of our casting and hiring processes for every project they undertake. Thus far, over 85% of all casts and crews to date have come from equity-owed communities.
The Green Line
After working in journalism for two decades, Founder and Editor-in-Chief Anita Li noticed that news media often failed to accurately reflect many communities they claim to serve, especially underrepresented ones. The Green Line’s goal is to redefine the city’s identity by centering the people and places that are the driving force behind Toronto’s culture and sense of community. The Green Line aims to be a more self-aware, inclusive, equitable and community-driven local outlet in Toronto that focuses on much-needed solutions in its reporting. By investigating the way we live, The Green Line gets to the root of the issues that impact Torontonians the most. The Green Line collaborates with journalists and creators from the communities they serve to report on local solutions that target the sources — not the symptoms — of the biggest problems facing our city.
Kiso HQ
As an immigrant to Canada, founder Ukot Umezinne saw firsthand the difficulty that black immigrant women face in trying to land decent-paying jobs in Canada. Even with the country’s heavy investment in immigrant workers, a lack of “Canadian experience” on a resume makes it immensely difficult to find a quality position, regardless of other qualifications. This led Ukot away from her former field, Learning Design, pivoting to a career in tech sales after attending a boot camp. This inspired Ukot to start Kiso HQ’s Black Immigrant Women in Tech Sales (BIW-Ts) initiative, designed to get Black immigrant women in Canada into high-paying tech sales jobs by providing them with tech sales training, interview readiness coaching, job matching, and more.
Eat Impact
Did you know that nearly 60% of all food produced in Canada goes to waste? In founding Eat Impact, Anna Stegink set out to do something about food waste, a massive and complex problem that is responsible for 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Eat Impact partners with farmers and distributors to rescue produce that is at risk of going to waste due to not meeting cosmetic retail standards or being in excess supply. This perfectly fresh misfit produce is delivered in a customizable box weekly to customers to help them eat better, do good and save money.
The Social Venture Zone’s incubation program opens three times a year to social entrepreneurs in Toronto. You can find more information about the program here, and follow us on social media to find out more about the SVZ and when we reopen applications in early December.