The 2024 Social Innovation Gathering
Strengthening Capacity for Collective Action on the Sunshine Coast: A Focus on Community Well-being
October 2 & 3, 2025
Join us for two days of hands-on learning, community connection, and systems thinking as we explore what it takes to build inclusive wellbeing on the Sunshine Coast. There are only 45 seats available, get your ticket before they are gone!
Our House of Clans
Sechelt, Sunshine Coast
Hosted by The Partners in Change Society and Facilitated by InWithForward
Why this? Why Now?
This two day workshop centres a big idea that connects many of our various change-making efforts on the Sunshine Coast: inclusive wellbeing. Together we’ll ask and explore different ways of knowing, being, and learning together that underpin the transition from social safety nets to trampolines. This is important so that more people in our community can rebound from difficulty and achieve wellbeing in the ways that matter most to them and allow them to remain in this beautiful region they call home.
As your co-hosts (Partners in Change and InWithForward) we share a hypothesis about a key, shared intervention in this transition toward inclusive wellbeing in our community.
We believe that if we strengthen our individual and collective skills to listen deeply, skillfully, and thoughtfully to what matters to people on the margins, we will be much better able to identify dominant norms that hinder what people value and generate ideas and impacts with a fundamentally different approach than what currently keeps many of our social systems stuck.
By focusing on inclusive wellbeing during our time together, our aim is for participants to leave with a shared language and framework that links local efforts, leading to new and more meaningful collaborations and potential breakthroughs on social issues where progress has been difficult.
What Will We Do?
This is not a sit-and-listen conference. It’s hands-on, immersive, and action-oriented.
Learn and experience critical design ethnography* an immersive research approach that centres people most affected by local issues.
Envision what social policies and services might look like if they were designed around inclusive wellbeing.
Practice identifying levers for change at the individual, organizational, and community level.
Strengthen relationships, build shared language, and imagine new ways of working together.
*Ethnography is a research method focused on understanding culture, and how people live and make meaning in their everyday contexts. Design ethnography focuses on learning about the features of solutions that might help someone close gaps between their current reality and the future they desire. The “critical” refers to an ethical commitment to asking questions about power, agency to define what matters, and who benefits from the data.
Who Should Attend?
We welcome participants from a broad range of roles and experiences, including:
Community-based educators and action researchers
Local policy makers and planners
Indigenous-led organizations
Non-profit and social service staff, leadership, and board members
Environmental organizations
Youth with a desire to learn and get involved
People with lived or living experience of the issues we’re working to address
Social purpose business owners and leaders
We see a diversity of perspectives, roles, and lived and living experiences as a strength. All we ask is that you join with an open mind, ready to learn, and the intention to participate over both days.
Participation is by invitation only. If you have not received an invitation but would like to attend, please contact us to express your interest.
In With Forward
InWithForward is a social design studio that co-creates new models of care and connection using a blend of design, social science, and community development methods. They helped orchestrate and facilitate our 2024 local social innovation gathering at YMCA Elphinstone, and feedback made it clear — participants wanted to learn more from this team.
Focused on systems change that prioritizes connection, agency, purpose, beauty, and learning, InWithForward has worked across diverse issue areas including Indigenous child protection, youth mental health, disability, newcomer settlement, and houselessness.
This year’s gathering on October 2 and 3 will be framed around the Culture of Wellbeing framework, developed through several years of work with the City of Edmonton.
Meet The Facilitators
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Dr. Sarah Schulman
LEAD PARTNER
Sarah is a Founder of InWithForward, and its Social Impact Lead. As a sociologist, Sarah is fascinated by what makes individuals, families, and policymakers tick. She’s worked with federal, regional, and local governments in 6 countries to shift how policies are made and measured. From 2010-2012, Sarah co-ran InWithFor and worked with The Australian Centre for Social Innovation to launch 3 new social solutions including the award-winning Family by Family. From 2008-2009, Sarah was the Youth Project Lead at Participle, one of the first social design shops in the world.
She holds a Doctorate in Social Policy from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and a Masters of Education from Stanford University. In 2015, the Metcalf Foundation appointed Sarah as their Innovation Fellow. Committed to crossing disciplinary divides and finding fresh ways to reimagine social policy issues, in 2019 she completed a certificate in global journalism from the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto and is a Dialogue Associate with Simon Fraser University’s Morris Wosk Centre for Dialogue. Her writing has been published in The Globe & Mail, Maclean’s, and The Walrus. In 2020, she co-wrote The Trampoline Effect with Gord Tulloch, describing what social research & development looks & feels like in practice.
InWithForward is Sarah’s fourth start-up organization. Her first? Earth Wise, which she started with a group of friends at the age of 8!
Fun facts: Sarah was once a sting agent for the state of Texas. And she’s a mediocre tap dancer.
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Natalie Napier
RESEARCH AND STORYTELLING LEAD
Natalie Napier is Research & Storytelling Lead at InWithForward. She holds a BA in International Development, and an MA in (Canadian) History. Before joining IWF, she worked in community economic development for over ten years, where she has helped found social enterprises and cooperatives.
Natalie finds the human kind of problems the most irresistible (but will quickly walk away from a computer on the blink.) The ways that communities produce different opportunities, experiences, and connections is, in her opinion, just gripping. She lives in Peterborough, Ontario.
Fun fact: In grade two, Natalie dragged her brother down to last place on a televised, sibling-based game show called Kidstreet. She still loves (to lose) at Trivial Pursuit.
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Elizabeth Boyd
DESIGNER
Boyd is the lead designer for Meraki, developed with posAbilities. She believes in the power of stories. Her childhood spent on front porches in the deep south instilled in her a love for people, interesting conversation, and spicy pimento cheese. After a lifetime of planning to be a professor of poetry, she found herself crying in a Chipotle, hearing about Industrial Design for the very first time.
Boyd holds a degree in Industrial Design from Auburn University, where she served as their IDSA Student Merit Award Winner for 2018. Her love for design lives at the intersection of storytelling, empowerment, and problem solving. She is adaptable, curious, and ever eager for the next adventure.
Fun Facts: Boyd started a soap business that was shown at New York Design Week, featured on Core77, and fully funded on Kickstarter. She has a first degree black belt in tae kwon do, and hates pickles more than anything in the world.
