Cape Geoffrey
Organization: Evergreen
Year Founded: 1990
Country: Canada
Website: www.evergreen.ca
Geographic Area of Impact: .
Model: Hybrid Non-Profit
Focus: Environment,Health.
Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Canada, 2007 Video The Innovation Evergreen operates as both a charity and hybrid nonprofit venture. Its mission is to bring communities and nature together for the benefit of both. Started in 1990 to help communities plant trees and green urban spaces, the organization has rapidly grown in its impact on schools, communities, businesses, and governments that work together to create and benefit from a healthy, natural sustainable society. The organization has partnered with over 3,500 school projects and 500 community projects and has reached over 3 million school children. Evergreen is a recognized international leader in ‘green city’ movements, in large part because its community partnerships enable it to effectively measure up to the scale of its ambitions. One of its most recent projects has been the redevelopment of an old industrial site in downtown Toronto into a national centre for sustainable cities. This $55M project involves three levels of government and extensive community partnerships. Evergreen Brick Works will be Canada’s first fullfledged, large-scale environmental discovery centre. It will be a dynamic, magical place that models sustainability on all fronts – from the adaptive reuse of the heritage buildings to creating an economically self-sustaining operation. At heart it is a centre for learning through play, crafts, demonstrations, programming, and innovative partnerships. The site will be animated with year-round programs and activities that include a native plant nursery, demonstration gardens, a local farmers’ market, conference and event facilities, youth leadership and children’s camps, family programming, and youth-at-risk programs. Background With issues such as urban planning, community health, climate change, and environmental sustainability at the forefront of public concern and international debate, the need for Evergreen’s work has never been stronger. Evergreen has been able to align resources and efforts of private, public, and non-profit organizations to address urban environmental issues and to promote environmental action at the community level. In bringing these communities together, Evergreen increases the presence of public nature spaces in an urban context. This approach is particularly vital in large Canadian cities, including Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary, which have recently experienced significant urban sprawl. The existence of green landscapes contributes to making the cities truly livable and also to creating a practical and achievable blueprint for environmental sustainability. Strategy Evergreen’s strength is facilitating and bridging community partnerships to promote environmental development. The eight-person management team, and seventy staff - made up of various urban planning, management, marketing and finance professionals, has built an effective and replicable model to forge corporate partnerships with a community interest and resources on the ground. This model has been applied consistently to the organization’s four main programs: Learning Grounds – Projects to green school grounds; Common Grounds – National service to protect natural and cultural landscapes, restore degraded environments, and protect spaces for open recreation, education and enjoyment; Home Grounds – Consulting activities and information resources specially designed to encourage environment-friendly residential lawn care practices; Brickworks – A C$55M initiative to redevelop 19th century industrial buildings in Toronto into a mixed use environmental education and leadership centre. The site, which will be ready by 2010, is designed to cover 100% of operating costs through leasing of office space and event rentals, conferences, parking and admissions. The site plan will include a local food merchants and a seasonal farmers market, community gardens, office space for social enterprise organizations, arts programming, youth leadership training facilities, a restaurant, a place to study geological and natural history, exhibits on the future of green cities, a children’s discovery centre, and community conference facilities. The Entrepreneur Geoffrey Cape is the visionary founder and leader behind Evergreen’s national organization. Over the past 18 years, Geoffrey has played an active role in building a supportive culture of innovation that is well-recognized and attracts talent. Geoffrey capitalized on his interest in the environment and his abilities to innovate and to make things happen. At the age of 25, Geoffrey built upon his experience in the real estate industry when he recognized an opportunity to focus his efforts on the unbuilt landscape in cities – the green spaces. Starting out with planting trees, Geoffrey applied great energy to grow his organization to its present size with over 70 staff and nearly 2000 volunteers. As an avid supporter of urban issues, Geoffrey Cape is one of Canada’s Top 40 under 40, and a recipient of numerous other awards, a testament to Geoffrey’s success as a leader in urban innovation.
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