'Tis the season to be cycling, and one Ottawa neighbourhood is taking advantage of a new bike-share program to do just that. Hear from the founders about how they turned this social enterprise dream into a reality and what they learned along the way.

SEE Change Magazine recently sat down with Tara Rogerson, Director of Social Enterprise at Evergreen, to talk about that charity’s experience in the social enterprise realm.

Mama Jane is leading our group of struggling men and women as we traverse the narrow road from the Mara River back to her home, buckets of water slung across our backs, balanced precariously with the help of tethered rope and community encouragement. Halfway up I stop, exhausted, and pass the load—now slipping from my sweaty grasp—to my teammate, tagging her as “it,” with the task of completing the journey. We’re in Emori Joi, a Kenyan village in South Narok, Kenya, on a traditional water walk, tracing the route women here (“mamas”), have taken for years to meet their laundry, cooking and bathing needs. Every single day. Not once but five times. Often while carrying babies, machetes and firewood. Just another day for the Mamas.

In 2000, Winnipeg’s Inner City, particularly the North End, was a community in crisis. It was exhibiting the severe effects of poverty. The unemployment rate in the inner city neighbourhood, at 16.8%, had increased to a point that was more than triple the average unemployment rate in the rest of the city. Houses were boarded up as they became uninhabitable, and many commercial properties along the main streets had been vacated. Boarded up properties, both residential and commercial, became targets for arson. Parts of the community appeared like a ghost town and the area was prone to violence as gangs established their turf. Crime flourished and Winnipeg earned the reputation as the murder capital of Canada. Many residents, both in the inner city and elsewhere, lived in fear.