Social Mission

percolab is a social enterprise, a sustainable company that focuses on social change as its core business. We accompany change towards innovative practice and tools that are more humanist and sustainable. Increased well being in the learning and working world is our goal.

When we embark on a project, we target at least two of  following objectives:

• improve systemic approaches for prevention and solving of problems;
• empower individuals and organisations to take charge of the development of their competences in a lifelong learning perspective;
• improve the matching between learning needs (education or training) and learning means, specifically integrating informal and experiential possibilities that take into account the context and preferences of the learner;
• apply an integrated and personalised approach to employee and organisational development, taking into account value alignment, personal interests, experiences and competence;
• contribute to the development and adoption of free and open technological solutions based on open standards;
• contribute to the development of open and free digital content for sharing;
• ensure that individuals and organisations maintain the control of their personal data and their digital identity;
• contribute to the success of collaborative networks and collective online approaches.

Social change projects we have initiated and invested in:

• ECTO: a coworking cooperative: Our “office” is here, a cooperative co-working space shared with a diverse network of innovative professionals. A place to work and a place to learn! More info..
• Conversations on competences: 8 ePortfolios Projects for Lifelong Learning, Employability, and Learning Organisations: a bilingual international event supporting reflection on eportfolios across education, employment and community organisations More info…
• Équipage: an innovative program for future intra and entrapreneurs involved in social enterprises. Based on creative and well proven techniques of learning in action and in a team from Team academy. This project is just getting strarted.
• Interopability and ePortfolios conference series: we organised and hosted a series of video conferences with European experts on interopability.
• And, not to forget that percolab itself is a social change project… it is an experiment in a way to run and govern a private company.

Organisations that we are a member of and collaborate with:

• Montréal Ouvert: a citizen initiative that promotes open access to civic information for the region of Montreal.
• ECTO: a coworking cooperative, we are members and Yves Otis is president of the board of directors.
• Groupe de travail sur les normes (GTN-Québec): providing an expertise to the education community of Québec on standards that relate to education.
• Le Centre de documentation sur l’éducation des adultes et la condition féminine (CDÉACF) we are part of a pan Canadian research group on essential skills.
• Team Factory and the Team Academy network of innovative entrepreneurial schools that initiated in Finland. We participated in a learning expedition to  Finland in 2011 to better understand this inspiring model.
• Communautique: organisation supporting civic participation via technologies is an organisation we collaborate with in differenet ways. Samantha Slade is on the board of directors. We are following closing the MandaLab (Montreal Living Lab) initiative and support their manifesto for a digital framework for Québec.
• Corporation de développement économique et communautaire Centre-Sud/Plateau Mont-Royal (CDEC CS-PMR) : Partners in the local development of our neighborhood as well as in Montreal
• Institut de coopération en éducation des adultes (ICÉA): A democratic civil society organisation promoting the rights and potentiel for lifelong learning for adults in Québec.