Small Business Week 2023

Description of the project: In 2022, the City of Vaughan form the 2022-2026 Diversity Equity and Inclusion Plan as a roadmap that will guide the City’s ongoing efforts to foster an inclusive, equitable and accessible community for all. It aims to identify forms of discrimination that create barriers to equity and inclusion in the workplace including businesses and address inequities in access to services, community participation and civic engagement head-on with meaningful and tangible solutions. Diversity has and will always be among our greatest strengths. The City’s residents are a mosaic of more than 217 ethnic or cultural origins and there are 113 unique languages spoken in Vaughan, an increase of eight languages from the 105 reported languages in 2016. Vaughan’s diverse communities have made and continue to make significant contributions to the city’s cultural, economic and social fabric, which shapes Vaughan as the beautiful mosaic city.

Along with this plan, the Vaughan’s Economic Development Department’s Vaughan Business and Entrepreneurship Centre (VBEC), has focused on helping business become more inclusive while driving the Canadian economy. By collaborating with seven powerful community partners who are sharing the same mandate to foster inclusivity within small business, VBEC hosted it’s 2023 Small Business Week (https://vaughanbusiness.ca/sbw/) the educational but interactive event and seminar contents focused on diversity and inclusion with an emphasis on cultural diversity and representation as well as industry variety in small business during the October 15-21, 2023.

Programming, the contents were being delivered together with local business support organizations such as Vaughan Chamber of Commerce, Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), YSpace/York University, TechConnex, Futurepreneur, Vaughan Public Libraries, and The Black Entrepreneur Alliance (BEA) among others.

Program Delivery with collaboration: Small Business Week events took place virtually and included an in-person networking event. In a total of 12 different seminar topics were delivered, 6 of them were on the topic of the diversity, equity, and inclusion focus, which included a keynote session during the kickoff event with the subject of ‘The Future of DEI in Small Business’ delivered by Carlos Cadogan, Certified Cultural Intelligence Consultant, youtube posting here: Carlos Cadogan Keynote speaker from Small Business Week 2023 (youtube.com)”. The rest of the topics are below;

• Supporting 2SLGBTQ+ Employees Through Meaningful Practice
• Being a Diverse Founder in the Food & Beverage Industry”. Although not listed on the landing page, a recording of the session was posted here: Being a Diverse Founder in the Food & Bev Industry By Black Entrepreneurship Alliance (BEA) Yspace (youtube.com)
• Inclusive Hiring Practices for Your Business
• Seniorpreneurship
• Accessible Business | Scope, Skills, & Strategy

This series of virtual events was offered at no cost to entrepreneurs and was delivered during the week of October 15-21, 2023, and 384 attendees joined the 12 sessions.

Partners’ Contribution: It led the City of Vaughan Economic Development department in partnership with eight key community organizations within economic development ecosystems. The effort of diversifying the seminar contents to have DEI focus attracted more audiences from the different groups where in historically were not interested in attending in this event.

Partners delivered the core seminar contents:

• Vaughan Chamber of Commerce
• Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)
• YSpace/York University
• TechConnex
• Futurepreneur
• Vaughan Public Libraries
• C3Labs
• The Black Entrepreneur Alliance (BEA)

Participants:

• Vaughan’s small business owners, and entrepreneurs
• VBEC’s entrepreneurship program alumni who are black entrepreneurs to participate in panelists discussion