SpitStrips is a company founded by the grade 11 high school students enrolled in the MaCS (Math and Computer Science) program at William Lyon Mackenzie Collegiate Institute in Toronto. They’ve created a prototype product, SpitStrips, to help change society’s behaviour towards drinking and driving. The product itself is a portable strip that quickly determines blood alcohol content based on the user’s saliva. The business model is to offer an affordable, accurate, portable product that would potentially help people better understand and manage their consumption while bringing awareness to their choices. Currently they are working in a Ryerson chemistry lab in the research and development phase.

But this isn’t just some science school project. In May, the team won first place in the Social Enterprise Business category at the 2017 Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship (SAGE) Canada Nationals at Ryerson University. They then travelled to Ukraine to represent Team Canada at an international business competition with 33 countries participating. Here they pitched their product to industry professionals. Ultimately they placed second internationally with their idea. SpitStrips also won a United Nations Gold Medal for their venture following the UN Sustainable Development goals: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages.

Your team presented your idea in the Ukraine at a competition this year. So, how did you get selected?

After sending in a video application on our business idea and product, our team was selected to participate in a national youth entrepreneurship competition by an organization called SAGE (Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship) earlier in May. We competed in the category of SEB (Social Enterprise Business) whose primary goal is to initiate a social change which in our case was reducing the amount of intoxicated drivers on the road to increase safety. At the national competition we pitched to and took questions from a panel of business professionals. After placing first out of the 50+ businesses that applied, we were given the opportunity to represent Team Canada by travelling to Odessa, Ukraine that coming August to compete internationally along with 33 other countries.

Your team was awarded second place! Congrats! How did you celebrate?

We were very happy with our result- not only for placing second internationally, but for the social awareness we spread regarding drunk driving to hundreds of people around the globe with whom we interacted, networked, and made friends with. Although a large part of our success was winning our title, the more important part was promoting our movement internationally. It is important not to get complacent as for us the competition just provided us with further validation of the potential of our venture, and we are eager to keep working towards that. Nonetheless, we had a great celebration with all of the new friends we made from the 32 countries attending the global competition the night the results were in! We were celebrating both competition results but furthermore, how far we have come together as a business in the last year.

What kind of challenges (good and not so good) have you faced so far?

As youth, we were faced with the difficulties of inexperience and uncertainty, but those are the best challenges you can have! We were really pushed outside of our comfort zone, and we experienced what we would not have thought possible just months before. We got real life lab experience at Ryerson University who was generous enough to provide us with a lab space, as well as, with the chemicals we needed for our research. However, with that opportunity also came one of our biggest challenges: setback after setback in research (which we came to learn was expected), but despite that, we came out under 2 weeks later with a fully revised procedure and working prototype! Another challenge we have had to deal with is the ability to make a concise and well-executed presentation. Through our experiences we were able to pitch and network with various well-established individuals, and there was always something to change and take away from their feedback. Unfortunately, for us that meant there was always something to change. From before we presented at SAGE Nationals in May to SAGE Globals in August, we must have made at least 10 different copies of the same presentation, all with slight changes and updates. In the end we benefited by knowing our material inside and out, but we learned that we can never be perfect in our content, as well as that our delivery, and the emotions we convey in our presentation, are far more important.

So, what’s next for your business idea? What do you need to get you to the next level?

We have come a very long way in the last few months in between social media marketing, research development, day-to-day practices, and continuing to set and work towards our goals. Over the summer, we were able to create a functioning prototype of our product. However, there is still testing that needs to be done before we finalize our product and get it onto market as soon as possible. We are truly working on our product for the desire of making the world a better place, and we would love to look towards forming partnerships with organizations such as those in the alcohol industry, education institutes such as universities and colleges, as well as, pharmaceutical companies and bars/restaurants — anyone that wants to help us save lives!

So, what are your dream jobs?

All of us our super passionate about doing something meaningful with our lives which is why we have invested so much time into SpitStrips. Working day in and day out at something that truly makes a difference in the world is the only way we feel you can lead a fulfilling life. Nothing is set in stone yet, but our team has a wide variety of interests including medicine, business, and engineering. No matter what our future occupations end up being we know it will be something that will make a difference in the world.

What’s been the most valuable lesson you’ve learned so far on this incredible journey?

Hard work, passion, and determination are all you need to propel you to success. We live in a time like no other where unprecedented amounts of information and resources are available to us, such that we can do anything we dream of. It is really important to take advantage of all the opportunities you have, and to start working on whatever excites you as soon as possible.

For more information visit their website spitstrips.wixsite.com

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At 131 Ossington Ave, O’Born Contemporary is showcasing The Girl Document, by Edith Maybin. The Girl Document is a featured exhibition in the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, selected among the approximate 1,000 artists that are exhibiting their works in Toronto.

Maybin, a Canadian artist and professor at Sheridan college, investigates the different femininities of mother and daughter in this captivating photographic series.

The Girl Document is Maybin’s first series that she does not engage in post-production processes. Instead of manipulating a photograph through digital processes, Maybin contorts the image by wrapping mylar around the lens. The result of this process is a clear depiction of elements that gradually becomes contorted.

Maybin depicts the dichotomy between the femininities of girl/woman and daughter/mother by creating a part-lucid and part-dreamlike depiction of elements that symbolize the innocent and the sexual.

The Girl Document speaks to the relationship between mother and daughter during the time of a daughter’s puberty and maturation. Maybin’s surrealist images of elements such as cake and fur emphasize the innocence of a girl and the sexuality of a woman. The twisted juxtaposition of elements of childhood and adulthood epitomize the fears that both daughters and mothers face when a child enters adolescence.

The young daughter depicted in Maybin’s earlier series, The Tenby Document, The Conversion Document, and The Garden Document, is lost within the contortion of symbolic elements of daughter and mother in this series. The Girl Document is characterized by Maybin’s acceptance of the loss of her young daughter to the inevitable fate of time, and embrace of her daughter’s growing independence from her mother during the beginnings of her adulthood.

East of O’Born Contemporary, at Akasha Art Projects on 511 Church St, Renée Munn’s photographic series The Looking-Glass Self is being exhibited. This is Munn’s first solo show, debuting for the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival.

Munn is a Canadian artist and recent graduate of Ryerson University. In this photographic series, she investigates her own feminine identity in multi-layered photographs that challenge traditional modes of female representation in art. In Reclining Nude, Munn makes this most obvious by overtly making homage to the motif of the reclining, female nude that has been a popular object of depiction within the history of art.

Similar to Edith Maybin, Renée Munn does not use any digital process to edit the pure processes of making photography. Instead, Munn uses techniques of multiple-exposure and physical fragmentation to alter the image. Munn glazes her works with beeswax to emphasize the editing of the image through the physical process of cutting and pasting. The final images exhibited in The Looking-Glass Self are resultantly multi-dimensional.

Munn’s utilization of the technique of doubling emphasizes her process of self-observation. Munn elucidates this in her artist statement “This act of doubling, which is both aesthetic and conceptual, refers to the often conflicted ways that our identities make themselves visible.” Munn places herself as the vulnerable object of a voyeuristic gaze which looks into the private act of female self-examination.

Stay tuned for more CONTACT coverage in the coming weeks, and be sure to check out the amazing talent being featured throughout our city this month!

For more information on the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, please visit http://scotiabankcontactphoto.com



The post Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival: Edith Maybin and Renée Munn appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

The field of social entrepreneurship is growing. An increasing number of individuals are working to create innovative solutions to address problems within their community and achieve a desired social change. While business entrepreneurs measure success in terms of profit and return, social entrepreneurs take into account a positive return to society and focus on social, cultural, environmental, as well as potential revenue goals.

How can we help facilitate a greater opportunity for these individuals to achieve their objectives? Where can aspiring social entrepreneurs go to find the answers, inspiration, resources, and support they need to develop a strategy around their ideas? Kanika Gupta was asking these very questions when she realized there was no centralized platform to guide prospective entrepreneurs in their efforts to develop an effective strategy and implement their ideas. This is when SoJo was born and Kanika, now the Chief Catalyst at SoJo, began to work towards creating a knowledge hub for entrepreneurs.

SoJo’s vision is to be the leading online resource that social innovators reference to turn their ideas for social change into action. Kanika highlights that “Google is a highly inefficient way of gathering information because it is so crowded. What SoJo does very well is curate information and deliver it based on relevancy.” SoJo is creating a customized online experience for its users. The team is focused on gathering content from a variety of partners, categorizing it to make it easy to find, and republishing it in a format that makes it easy to digest. With the help of a number of individuals and partners, including OCAD, SoJo has created a platform that is welcoming, engaging, and encouraging. As Kanika explains, “if you are committed and passionate, you can make it happen. You don’t have to have all the answers, you don’t have to have a perfect plan, you are going to figure it out along the way.” SoJo is here to guide you.

Kanika and the SoJo team are committed to supporting their community of users. “We do not have a single competitor. We need to work with everyone to make SoJo work. That is what the end user needs. The everyday, early stage social entrepreneur is our boss. We are continually asking ourselves: What are their needs? How can we best serve their needs?” The team has built out a network of 50 partners, from bloggers to large scale organizations such as Imagine Canada and Do Something.org, that produce relevant content and allow SoJo to not only put their content on their site, but also re-purpose it to make it more simplified. “We often receive dense PDF documents. Sometimes language gets changed to kill the buzz words and jargon, or if there are five elements in an article we may break them up into five separate articles to let the key messages shine on their own.” Each of the partners decides the degree of flexibility that allows SoJo to play with the content and works to provide a resource hub with the end user in mind.

SoJo demonstrates the exciting intersection of technology and social change. Working from Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone, Kanika feels fortunate to have found such a supportive and innovative space to implement SoJo’s vision. “What I love about Toronto is the growing startup tech community that exists. They have welcomed SoJo with open arms and have provided us with so much advice.”

It is wonderful to see the collaboration that exists across the SoJo network. In order to create real social impact, individuals and organizations will have to let go of their ego and their pursuit for empire. We cannot operate in silos and fear that our efforts to move forward are part of a zero-sum game. Without collaboration, not only do the organizations suffer in moving their missions forward, but also the individuals and community they claim to serve suffer in finding the right resources and support. By leveraging technology, SoJo creates an opportunity for content to gain wider visibility and creates real value for the budding social entrepreneurs out there who need help in creating innovative solutions to the most pressing problems that exist, both locally and globally. “There are a lot of people with great intentions and there are a lot of problems, and we need to help those working to find solutions. The current ecosystem is not equipped to help people in the early stages find the resources they need to raise their idea out of infancy.” SoJo is working to transform this ecosystem and create the infrastructure to help social entrepreneurs succeed.

To further help people along the lonely entrepreneurial journey, SoJo has worked hard to document its own efforts to establish a social enterprise. Their blog, the Social Journal, is a transparent and candid account of the various ups and downs of a start-up. SoJo is keeping track to be a role model, and to share with its audience how they have overcome challenges and how they have seized opportunities along the way.

Despite the challenges, Kanika is looking forward to the journey ahead. “SoJo is working to change the way people think. Right now it is only being manifested by a website.” RedefiningTO hopes Toronto is excited to watch the seed of SoJo flourish right here in our city, continue to redefineTO, and shape the growth of the community of social entrepreneurs in Toronto and beyond.

facebook.com/mySoJo/

mysojo.co

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