An interesting perspective on our work. Below is an excerpt from a recent article in the National Post. The full article can be found on the National Post's website.

A Charity with Plenty of Very Long Tentacles

By Kevin Libin, National Post
November 20, 2010

http://www.nationalpost.com/charity+with+plenty+very+long+tentacles/3859...

In late October, a group of environmental and social justice activists met at a remote lodge on Cortes Island, 150 kilometres north of Vancouver, up the Georgia Strait. The four-day gathering was billed as the Social Change Institute -- an event that says it "gathers seasoned and emerging leaders with thinkers and trainers from the change-making world" -- and it's been happening for years. The lodge is called the Hollyhock Centre, a New Age retreat known for its holistic healing circles, Shaman drum making workshops and Tantric "sacred sexuality" seminars.

Stop before you conjure up images of hippies dreaming of a utopian free love world. The Social Change Institute is a magnet for professionals. Professional activists. Professional environmentalists. And, yes, professional business people and politicians. One does not sign up for the SCI; one applies and is accepted-- or not. The 12-hectare centre, which started life in the early 1980s precisely as something resembling a hippie caricature, has been transformed into the virtual headquarters of a powerfully sophisticated and co-ordinated network of people who are mobilizing millions of dollars "towards systemic social change focused in one region," as Hollyhock president Joel Solomon has described his mission.

On his side are wealthy trust-fund progenies, powerful U.S. business leaders, billion dollar American foundations, a web of environmental groups and prominent Vancouver political players. The region under focus for "systemic" change is Western Canada. The funding is frequently foreign. And Canadians may not know it yet, but the program is already well underway.

In a promotional video, praising the institute's work, one attendee notes, "I think we're starting to see ourselves as parts of a whole, rather than as separate pieces." And that co-ordination, co-operation and collective power is precisely the point of the Social Change Institute. And not just the institute: It's the point of all the efforts Mr. Solomon has brilliantly co-ordinated into a breathtakingly enterprising strategy.

Mr. Solomon is the vice chair of Tides Canada, and a director and former chairman of Tides' American board. And he is a major reason Tides has been pumping money into environmental and social activist groups that have been fighting fish farms in British Columbia, the oilsands in Alberta, logging in the Boreal forest, and dozens of other anti-industrial campaigns. Most any prominent green group you might think of has probably been on Tides' list of recipients. Tides also provides charitable assistance to The Tyee, its website shows, an NDP-friendly online magazine. Tides has hired government lobbyists. Former officials and affiliates of Tides, meanwhile, have influence at the highest level of Vancouver's city government, including its eco-chic mayor Gregor Robertson, who has made it his explicit goal to turn Vancouver into the "greenest city in the world." Some of the biggest donors to his campaign, and that of his Vision Vancouver party, are also connected to Tides.

Read the full article online.