From Bean to Bar

In this paper, we describe a business with cultural purpose. East Vancouver Roasters (EVR) engages women recovering from addiction and trauma in the creation of chocolate from raw cocoa beans in Canada's most demonized community: Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The initiative has a number of goals. First, it is designed to reach a population with innovative, low-barrier employment. Second, it seeks to create a viable business with social conscience (a social enterprise). Third, its wider cultural goal is to generate social and economic capital intended to bolster community esteem. Finally, EVR presents opportunities to learn from women with psycho-spiritual pain about the meaning of work and barriers to employment. We share our stories here to describe a social enterprise from the perspective of social actors involved in its creation and operation

Aesthetics · Business · Clothing · Downtown · Economics · Job creation · Political science · Population · Public relations · Social capital · Social science · Sociology · Visual arts · History · Law · Psychology · Social Sciences and Governance · Marketing