Positions available: 3

‘Social enterprise’, for the purpose of this specific project: - is an ongoing business venture that sells a good and/or service; is created with a primary aim of achieving an environmental, social, and/or cultural impact; and operates in Canada.

The goal of the project is to produce a website that acts as an online searchable Canadian directory of social enterprises. Users will be able to search the directory by location, social cause, and other characteristics: 1. as a shopper, to find goods and services being offered by social enterprises e.g. someone wants to buy baked goods from an Edmonton bakery that is also hiring folks with employment challenges; and/or 2. as a social enterprise, to network with others in their field e.g. a bakery social enterprise in Edmonton wants to connect with another social enterprise bakery in Canada to chat about a specific challenge or to trade best practices, key suppliers, etc

Because there are no resources to support the website after launch, it will be designed to enable the social enterprises themselves to update and enhance their own listings. A best practice in this area is ‘Google My Business’. The website will be user-friendly, attractive, and responsive to PC’s and mobile devices. It will be powered by a database infrastructure that is robust enough to handle future growth in the number of active social enterprise listings and future search fields; and have the ability to easily import existing social enterprise data from commonly used databases. The front end of the site will include a verification system to block spamming, and to deter entities that are not social enterprises from adding their own directory listing.

Students focused in these study areas would add value to the project: - Website design - Databases and coding - Marketing and communications (including SEO) .

In order to enhance the project and provide meaningful support and learning opportunities to the students, experts from a company that pre-dates Google -- 1st on the List Promotion Inc. – will lead a Guidance Committee. This volunteer Committee will be available at key points in the planning and implementation process to provide feedback to the students in areas such as: - URL and platform choice - user interface considerations - search engine optimization - website security - general design and functionality - scale- and compatibility-related tech decision points

Also supporting the project on a pro bono basis is Matt Ros, a Vancouver-based software engineer who currently works for Rise People, where he helps to build Human Resources software for small businesses. Matt holds a degree in Computer Science from Duke University.

The student will be supervised by Stacey Corriveau, the Executive Director of the BC Centre for Social Enterprise.