A group of Queen’s graduate students recently created a new resource that will help Kingston-area social enterprises for years to come.

The Kingston Social Enterprise and Innovation Toolkit is a primer for social entrepreneurs. The students worked with the Social Planning Council of Kingston and District (SPC) to develop the toolkit, which will promote and support community economic development.

“We worked with the SPC and talked to people within the community of Kingston and area about the different elements social organizations could potentially use to become more successful,” says Queen’s School of Urban and Regional Planning student Megan Jones. “We then took that information and built a go-to resource.”

Social enterprises are ones that work towards a social objective or mission. The toolkit includes information on a variety of subjects, including developing a social business plan, feasibility, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.

The SPC plans to adopt the toolkit as an official resource, and distribute it to local social entrepreneurs. The toolkit will also be updated in future years to reflect the changing economic, social and physical environs of Kingston and area.

The other students on the team were Amy Doyle, Jennifer Gawor, Claire Lindsay, Fran Willes and Jennifer Wood. The group worked under the supervision of professors Patricia Collins and Leela Viswanathan.