A new space for socially-minded businesses: the Forge grants office space to social enterprises.

• Author: Migneault, Jonathan
• Position: NEWS - ReThink Green

Jenny Martindale usually works from home, but in mid-March she started to work part-time out of a new co-working space in Sudbury called The Forge.

Martindale manages international trips for an outdoor travel company called Wild Women Expeditions.

The business, which started in Sudbury, organizes outdoor adventure trips around the world, tailored specifically for women.

Until her foray with a co-working space, Martindale dedicated a small corner of her bedroom to her home office.

"It's nice to separate work from home sometimes," she said. "If you work at home you're always by yourself, you never have interactions with other people, except online."

Martindale said The Forge appealed to her, because of its downtown Sudbury location, near her home, and the flexibility it can offer clients.

She said she plans to continue working from home most of the time, but could see herself spending 10 or more hours per week at the Forge, to interact with other people and escape the distractions that come with a home office.

The Forge opened in January 2014, but has been in the planning stages since 2007, when its parent organization, reThink Green, first formed in Sudbury.

ReThink Green was created to promote environmental action, policy and networking in the Greater Sudbury area, and includes a network of 13 environmental organizations.

"Environmental agencies are typically siloed," said Justin Carter, reThink Green's executive director. "They work on different projects and so there's often a need in the community for one umbrella organization that looks at coordinating the overall goals, making sure the resources are there and really sharing capacity"

As part of its mandate, reThink Green provides space for its various member organizations and shares human and financial resources with them.

"A lot of the groups we work with are volunteer-driven," Carter said. "They don't have the luxury of having a physical place to work from, and that links to certain problems in terms of having a consistent meeting space."

A co-working space, where socially-minded organizations could rent office space at affordable prices, was the next logical step for reThink Green to fulfill its mandate. Carter said.

But the project did not get underway in earnest until June 2013, when reThink Green was able to secure $149,400 in funding, over two years, from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

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