MaRS

Their mission: to contribute to the world's economic and social development by promoting innovation, technology transfer and the establishment of technology- and innovation-based companies. Sounds a lot like MaRS...

The Wellesley Institute brings us a report on how the "third sector" (the sector of non-profit, charitable and voluntary organizations with programs and services) is doing in these economic and regulatory times. Chris Evans writes a blog on this report at http://blog.marsdd.com

Young entrepreneurs and wanna-be young entrepreneurs need to watch this. From Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup, the event is "Totally Wired Youth Entrepreneurs." Moderated by Guy Kawasaki, the panelists are really young and really smart/successful. Inspirational. Making me wish I'd worked on my cool idea when I was 16...

Canada has joined Australia, Finland, Ireland, India, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom in providing nationwide access to the Cochrane Library, a collection of evidence-based medicine reviews and a critical health sciences resource. The current pilot project, which runs through the end of 2009, allows all Canadian users to access the complete Cochrane collection from any computer in the country. The Canadian Health Libraries Association reports that almost 40,000 Canadians were denied access to a Cochrane systematic review in 2007.

Check out this podcast from Rabble.ca which covers a screening of the documentary, Us Now. The film talks about how technology enables community participation and MaRS Advisor Allyson Hewitt (and Director of the Social Innovation Generation program at MaRS) puts in her her two cents about the opportunities here for social change organizations as well as her encouragement to turn ideas and hype on this into actual practical change.

An interesting Toronto-based social-purpose business. PUBLIC is a for-profit, social-purpose business focused exclusively on advancing the public good. We are an innovation company, generating positive social impact through the creation of scalable programs, products and campaigns that: * raise money for charitable purposes * increase civic and community engagement * advance social causes and issues * create new social norms We bring an integrated, impact- driven approach to mobilizing and advancing the public good by aligning brand awareness, policy influence and fundraising. For us, "advancing the public good" is about motivating people (and organizations) to behave in ways that benefit society while recognizing and appealing to their self-interest.

New government funding announced today includes $100 million to establish the Operating Line of Credit Guarantee and $350 million over three years to help drive venture capital investment in promising Canadian technology businesses.

Looking for more online entrepreneurship education options? Check out this list of where you can get it (at least in the States). Finance, accounting, management... the list of free online courses goes on and on. Take advantage and learn how to better grow your business.

Maybe if you'd started earlier, you'd already have that first killer idea taking off in the market place!? The Digital Open is an online technology community and competition for youth around the world, age 17 and under. Right now they have a competition open for their users launched by the Institute for the Future (iftf.org), a non-profit research organization based in Palo Alto