“A sociology degree, eh? What are you going to do with that?”
This is a question I’d heard one too many times in my five years studying at UBC. Whether it be from genuinely caring friends or family, or just the stranger you strike up a conversation with in a bar. The study of social inequality and social behaviour never seemed to connect me to a job title — of any kind.
I started questioning this thought. How can a person spend five years learning about how the social world works, but never be able to apply this knowledge to a career choice? Sure, there’s always research. But how was that going to change the immediate deteriorating and unequal job market? This disconnect is what led me to Buy Social Canada. A campaign aimed at creating a social-value marketplace by raising awareness and growing the local united body of social enterprises. So that feeling of insignificance and smallness, as an undergrad in a mass of 50,000 other students, didn’t seem so dramatic anymore. Maybe we weren’t all doomed? Maybe we could all start making changes to our society? Maybe I could use my education to start changing what I already knew about the social world? Maybe other students could, too.
The key word I keep mentioning here is “social.” I didn’t know what a “social enterprise” was until a few months ago. A social enterprise is a business that can make profits, but that has a mandate to reinvest those profits back into society to fulfill a greater social need. This ranges from hiring people with barriers to employment, to the commitment of buying local produce. Bingo! I had found my niche. I paved the way into a job that let me stick it to those that said I couldn't connect sociology to the working world. These people definitely didn’t know what a “social enterprise” was.
After a few weeks of training and research, I found out that Vancouver is actually a major hub for social enterprise. It was relieving to find out that not all businesses cared about profit economy over social equality. If all enterprises had a mandate to reinvest part of their profits back into their own society, we would all be living much healthier and happier lives. A recent study even shows that in Vancouver, for every dollar spent to employ a Downtown Eastside resident, society benefits by $3.32.
In reality, even though social enterprises are amazing and operate solely to fix social problems, they compete with corporations and for-profit companies daily. This is where Buy Social Canada comes into play. With Buy Social’s Goal of creating a marketplace for social enterprises by certifying them under one united body, this was a good spot for me to be in.
Change happens in really small increments. Why buy a mug from Walmart (which supports an unethical supply chain) when you can fund a local social enterprise that makes the same products, but employs women from the Downtown Eastside? Boom! You bought a mug and you are already making a change in the lives of your local community members. Hence why I signed on to help coordinate the social media for the campaign and start getting the word out there.
The whole round circle of this campaign, of my studies and of my job came back to this idea — it’s really not that hard to “make a difference.” We can shift the inequalities in the local job market by simply funding social enterprises that hire people from the community with barriers to employment. So then, as students, it should be our responsibility to start making social changes and taking social impact seriously. We need to start advocating for businesses that have better social impact policies. We “arts students” have upwards of four years of expensive education to speak for it! Start making social purchases, get in contact and join the movement!
Marissa Willcox is Information and Services Coordinator for Buy Social Canada and a fifth-year UBC student.
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