Em.'s In & Outs

ACCESS Community Capital Fund

Development Manager

The ACCESS Community Capital Fund (ACCESS) assists small and emerging businesses gain access to financing when it is not available through conventional sources. ACCESS is a Canadian registered charity that operates a community loan fund through the provision of loan guarantees. The fund was created by investments from socially minded individuals, organizations and businesses. ACCESS has developed strong community partnerships and is seeking to expand its mandate across the greater Toronto area. For additional information please visit us at www.accessccf.com

Position:

Reporting to the volunteer Board of Directors of ACCESS, the Development Manager is responsible for expanding the geographic scope of ACCESS and the volume of community-based lending through the development of chapters in Toronto. The position will work closely with the key stakeholders of ACCESS, including community organizations and related agencies, fund investors and the committed team of ACCESS volunteers. Actively involved in all aspects of the daily operations of ACCESS, the Development Manager will be integral to delivering upon ACCESS’ key strategic goals in the area of microfinance.

Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities:

• To identify, develop and establish new chapters of ACCESS that are focused on providing microloans to promising entrepreneurs in their local communities. The position will guide the chapter in implementing community-based lending in accordance with ACCESS’ loan review criteria and other practices.

• To manage the key operational aspects of the community loan fund and to champion its key strategic initiatives.

• To promote the sustainability of the community loan fund through the increased provision of microloans, strengthening ACCESS’ investor base, and engaging in fundraising activities, as well as other charitable activities targeted at new and existing individual and institutional donors.

• To support the Board’s outreach program for identifying, developing and nurturing key partnerships with community organizations and other potential partners, including those focused on business mentoring and other related services.

• To assist in coordinating ACCESS’ dedicated volunteer base to staff its loan review committees, as well as promote their engagement in community partnership and other activities related to social finance.

• To provide assistance and support in relation to the ACCESS Board of Directors and its related committees, as well as reporting as required to external stakeholders.

Qualifications and Attributes
Required:

• University graduate;
• 3 years business development experience (or equivalent) or 6 years senior business experience which included responsibility for building and maintaining customer relationships;
• Experience in evaluating credit applications or alternatively in financial analysis;
• Experience either as a volunteer chair, board member or staff in a not-for-profit organization working for at-risk communities;
• Excellent oral and written English communication skills and interpersonal skills

Preferably:
• Demonstrable experience in fundraising and event planning;
• Multiple languages.

Location: Toronto

Compensation:

Contract position with compensation commensurate with experience and comparable with the compensation offered in a non-profit organization.


We recognize the value of diversity in our communities and interested candidates should send a letter of interest, their resumes and three references by email in Word or pdf format to: hiring@accessccf.com.

We thank you for your interest in ACCESS. Only those applicants being considered will be contacted. Interviews will commence on January 11 and we will accept applications until the position is filled. Please distribute this posting to eligible candidates in your network.

A repost from some research one of my students did on whistleblowing, mindblowing!

"The following is a list of the presented statistics on whistleblowers in the U.S.:

100% were fired - most were unable to find new jobs

17% lost their homes

54% were harassed by peers at work

15% were subsequently divorced

80% suffered physical deterioration

90% reported emotional stress, depression and anxiety

10% attempted suicide

Source:

http://media.www.brockpress.com/media/storage/paper384/news/2004/03/30/Business/Famous.Cases.Of.WhistleBlowing-645453.shtml

Now, take these stats for what they are, but it is interesting that standing up against a higher authority on your own will likely bring a very uncomfortable and/or painful situation as a result of the higher authority trying to cover up mistakes or to silence the whistleblower. There is a good example of whistleblowers in the documentary "The Corporation" where two reporters are pressured to falsify information on a news story. The reporters refused to mislead the public by falsifying information and claimed their whistleblower status. However, the reporters' whistleblower status was overthrown by the courts as a result of the courts determining that falsifying information was not in fact against the law and subsequently fired the two reporters.

The Corporation Video Clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw"

Some notes on the debate... Right at the heart of my (current!) research topic =)

Eizabeth May (pro)
CC first threat and then water crisis.
Canada was a lead of the Our Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security, one of the first conferences
Consequences of CC could be second only to global nuclear meldown.
Margaret Thatcher : “thread to our world comes from tyrants and their tanks, it can be more insidious.. the danger of CC is unseen but still blablah we need to change” (15 years ago)
Sea levels raised 80% faster than the 3rd IPCC report predicted..

George Mombiot (pro)
“how lucky do you feel?” is what the “con” guys are talking about..
Commission by Nicholas Stern got other results regarding costs. Mitigation = 1% of GDP; Adaptation = costs with living with that levels of CC : 5% of GDP at the very best, or up to 20% of GDP in the worst case scenario.
Adaptation. Yes we can adapt to some of it for a few years in the developed world. But different in poor world. Adaptation technologies : drip irrigation, new crop varieties, etc. but doesn’t work so smoothly in practice. He worked many years in the Horn of Africa, and saw some of the new climate-induced droughts (that used to come every 30-40 years and now every 2-3 years).
Why should $ for tackling CC could come out of military budgets, etc.. we should invest in both CC and foreign aid.
Question of Copenhagen : do we continue as we are now, or do we pick up our responsibility and recognize the scale of that crisis? How lucky do you feel? (Copenhagen as unique moment in history).
Lord Nigel Lawson (con)
Critique of global
Founder of Global Warming Policy Foundation
Thinks if some policy issues would be implemented, it would be highly damaging. A survey of mainstream climate scientists, asking what the most pressing issue facing humanity, and 8% identified CC as such.
IPCC : likely cost of CC = $. Using a small groups of scientists in the UK for their sources on climate, apparently many incompetents there. Apparently no real warming this year.
In the most gloomiest economic times, apparently the incomes of developing world would be 8.5 times what it is now, compared to 9.5 times.
Carbon-energy : the cheapest energy source. Maybe shift in developed world. But in developing world, he says the fastest rate of economic growth is what they need, to address poverty, and that’ll need the cheapest sources of energy.
China and India not willing to not use carbon, France also urged Europe to do the same.

Bjorn Lomborg(con)
Time Magazing in top 100 intellectual and influence
Copenhagen Consensus Centre
Rhetoric : creating dichotomies saying if CC is the worst thing ever or you’re an enemy of mankind. This approach fundamentally unsound. Poor way to help world and GW.
Costs of changing and keeping to 2degrees cent. : 43 trillion dollars of costs for benefit of 3 trillion dollars.. because the response is too costly. (I wonder if Costa Rica’s approach is costly?)
We need to make solar panels so cheap that everybody including Chinese and Indian can buy them – we need R&D
We shouldn’t focus all the other problems in this world and throw them out the window, we also need policy.
I agree with Elizabeth, we need to change policies : we didn’t deliver with Rio or Kyoto, and so he thinks Copenhagen will be confettis and champagne and nothing more. We need to start being smart.
We have many problems to fix and we need to fix global warming smartly – to do good. It’s not the only challenge we need to fix in this century.

Rebuttals
Lord Chose-bine-trou
Stern review apparently criticized by a lot of people (mostly economists at Harvard and Yale..) saying that the Stern figures are absurd/rubbish.
2 things you should do about Stern review : 1) he was a government employee; 2) didn’t peer-review it;
Elizabeth May
Scientists don’t like focus on year-on-year because we’re dealing with very larger systems (cuz land mass warming at different rates than the oceans, for example).
Acidifying of oceans and threatening lives there – something the “cons” ignore in their books
Scientist at NASA communicating at scientist at East Anglia : discrepancy in data. NASA 2005 warmest year, 2007 same as 1998. (creepy, looking at emails between people, but people have different data sets)
387 ppm now. Never since industrial revolution has it been over 250 ppm.
Georgie
Stern Review was the greatest review of reviews, it’s a meta/uber review of peer-reviewed talks. It is the most scholarly thorough review of it.
Nigel said there has been no warming this century! (WTF?)
Bjorn Lomborg
Stern review almost universally discredited by economists. It’s not a mainstream review apparently. Stern was apparently asked to come up with the most extreme figures possible.
Damages can range from -1% - 5%, with average of 2%, but apparently Stern said 30%.
You can’t just pick up one economist (Stern) that has very high numbers, and say 1000s of climate economists agree, because apparently it’s not right.
Nigel
Idea of insurance. How do you address : are we insuring ourselves for the house burning down, e.g. the worst case scenario.
Elizabeth
Cost trade-offs in what Elizabeth proposes. Finite global economy. Charges that too aggressive action on CC would take us away from other issues in developing world?
E : $3t went to bailing out big companies. Nobody said “we have competing values, we don’t know what is the best action?”
People in developing world are very concerned with climate crisis. President of Lesotho said last night that climate crisis making HIV/AIDS worse of in my country every day!!!! And so the other guy’s idea that the focus should be on HIV and poverty alleviation is flawed.
George
I don’t know anybody in CC activism that isn’t concerned with poverty, malnutrition, etc. they ARE because of CC, these problems are exacerbated.
Droughts force people out of the land, they have to leave to find work elsewhere, prostitution, and bring back HIV/AIDS back to village (according to someone from OXFAM)
If oil peaks – all costs go through the roofs some more…
Nigel
Do you feel secondary effects of defossilization of economy? Could be valuable
N: big oil discoveries recently, also tech for extracting gas.
Look at China : it’s not gonna sign to turn to renewable energy. We need to look at different approach. China is dominant in Sub-Saharan Africa and is buying up Nigerian and Angola and Ghanaian oil – they intend to use it.
(China will double their emissions by 2030! What’s the tipping point when you get worried about ppm?)
Bjorn Lomborg
Yes we’re gonna see dramatic increases in CO2, China promised in fancy game of Copenhagen, they’ (carbon intensity : carbon/$produced, reduce 40-45% by 2020). So China will improve carbon ratio without doing all that much because they’re switching to a more service-intensive economy : so China said they were doing something awesome by doing nothing at all.. =/
We need better technology – it’s hard to ask anyone including ourselves to cut our emissions.
Do you really want to address HIV/AIDS by cutting emissions (doing very little at very high cost, so that’s it’s slightly less bad in 100years) or do you want to hand out condoms? What do we want to focus on?
Elizabeth
Also calling for technology.
Price of carbon – technological revolution to have better cars (will also be best for reducing SMOG and better health)
Pay-back time of a lot of good efficient green tech have negative costs! We waste more energy than we use in Canada!!!! If we improve energy productivity in the same way that we improved labour productivity. (yes!)
Look at tech, societal breakthrough, etc. but look at tracks to
Stone age didn’t end cuz we ran out of stones, it ended because we found something better!
George
What if there’s a global food deficit cuz of an increase of 3 degrees? OUCH! The world can get into structural famine.
Yes we need to deal with hunger and poverty, but let’s not create these false choices. We need to do both. Unless we deal with CC, we can’t deal with other issues.
Africa : 2 degrees of warming catastrophic. And we’re responsible for that warming! And Af picks up the bill, it’s a much severe bill, not paid in $ but paid in human lives. And those lives aren’t calculated in cost-benefit analysis (no moral backing whatsoever). Human lives must come first.
(modeling $ costs of loss lives and ecosystems. Moral claims made by “pro” people, how do you guys relate?)
Bjorn Lomborg
Is the right way to save species is to do CC mitigation? Or is it to make those countries rich so they will preserve those forests? (cuz developing cut down forest cuz no other choice, and developed c reforest)
CC mitigation is very incremential. What about having people living better lives?
Lord
Great killer is poverty. Aid can do a little bit, the thing that really gets people out of poverty is economic development. This is how we did it, this is how China is doing it.
George
(what would the cost be that if China didn’t eliminate a lot of poverty burning nasty coal?)
Don’t want to see a pay-off between access to energy and access to food!
False choice : poverty/people rot VS fossil fuel/CC
But you can do poverty alleviation without to build coal power stations and extract more fossil fuels, which all threaten many more lives than that we’re trying to protect!
The “con” side says that everything is ultimately flexible (I guess soft sustainability, or how economists think).
You can’t tell ecosystems to behave themselves!
If we shed out trillions of $, let’s spend those $ on green energy.
Elizabeth
The problem with this debate is that we haven’t looked at the context.
Impacts of GW have huge impacts. Depends on when we stabilize and at what point we stabilize. A huge supporter of adaptation/mitigation. a big part of this is poverty alleviation; decentralized energy supplies, more solar, etc. could all be part of this strategy, also is protecting the world’s forest.
Biggest contribution of developing world to CC: (mostly illegal) logging of Amazonian forest
We need to address loss of permafrost..
Stephen Lewis : “On top of everything, Africans are likely to experience more poverty, famine, droughts, conflicts over water. And climate crisis is a nightmare for Africa.”
George
When working with OXFAM in E-Af. Drought in Kenya. Only option was to raid neighboring tribes to steal resources from them. CC is a major program here, if we don’t address CC, we better pack out and leave.
OXFAM, Action and Christian aid are lobbying for CC to be on the agenda in Copenhagen. OXFAM: “CC is mankind defining crisis”.
Bjorn
A lot of studies saying this is the only and defining crisis.
Al Gore “how do you want to be remembered by your kids?” (relating to CC as a defining moment)
Spending trillions of $ and making no difference, or spending a lot less and making lots of + changes
Elizabeth
Science compelled even Mulroney and Thatcher..
Millions of environmental refugees.
CC a profound security threat.
When you’re in a crowded theatre and the floor is warming up and there’s smoke and someone says “stay in your seats ladies and gents” – but you have to still see the exit sign..
Lord
Real problem would be addressed with better water management, capture water when it comes.. strategies that address the “real” problems.
Don’t practice marginal exacerbation.
Believe in reason (ahah theory class! A rational planner, did he ever read Davidoff or Friedmann?)
Okay Elizabeth totally wins as always =)