Soul Space Collective Care offers a grounded, heart-centred approach to wellness that supports frontline community and social service workers. As part of CSED’s SE Spotlight Series, we recently sat down with Soul Space co-founder and executive director Danielle Rolfe to learn about the development of the organization and how their holistic practices create space for healing, reflection and genuine collective care.

What does Soul Space do?

Soul Space Collective Care is a non-profit organization that offers accessible retreats and workshops to support the spiritual wellbeing of frontline community and social service workers.

What is your origin story?

I co-founded Soul Space after making the documentary film, Blue Roses, which involved me following community health and peer support workers in Ottawa in 2018. During that process, I met and worked with Soul Space co-founder Robert Jamison (aka Bobby J), who was a peer support worker at Somerset West Community Health Centre working alongside other community health and peer support workers caring for people facing poverty, homelessness and substance use challenges. Their experiences with suffering, death, and burnout inspired Bobby and me to create a way of offering collective care to these frontline workers so that they would be able to deal with the grief involved with their work and ultimately allow them to remain healthy and continue in their important roles within our community.

How does social enterprise fit into your strategy?

Through much trial and error of programs and services, we found that the optimal model of support for these frontline workers is to engage their employers as our clients, providing day retreats and brief workshops that support the wellbeing of their frontline workers. This social enterprise model created a financially viable pathway for us to cover the costs of our retreats and facilitators, while also ensuring that frontline workers could access this collective care as part of their paid workday.

When workers feel supported by their employer, and receive this care (alongside adequate pay, benefits, and safe working conditions) it can contribute to their mental, emotional and spiritual wellness. Organizations see this care as a benefit to them because it can contribute to lower absenteeism and employee turnover.

Can you tell us about Soul Space’s transition to a stand alone organization?

We have greatly benefited from the support that we recently received from CSED to incorporate Soul Space Collective Care as a non-profit organization. Since 2021, we have been operating as a community ministry of First United Church in Ottawa. During this time, our social enterprise model received the incubation needed to received grants and donations, trial programs and services, and to establish trust within the non-profit community in Ottawa. The strong foundation that has been created has allowed us to now venture out as a stand along organization.

What’s your biggest insight or lesson learned since launching Soul Space?

Failing fast allows you to trial new things and to pivot towards what works and away from what is not working. Additionally, community engagement and collective action is needed to build a strong organization. It’s also okay for things to come to an end, and/or to narrow your focus to doing a few things well versus trying to be everything to everybody.

What makes you most proud?

That there are so many people in our community willing to step up, volunteer, and even try new things in the spirit of supporting community and community workers. Despite the grief that exists, there are many hearts willing to help carry the load.

What keeps you up at night?

With things getting more difficult in our world and community, I worry about the fact that people are gathering less, connecting less, and are unable to take time to pause and care of the spirit, however that might look for them: walks in nature, time with friends, sitting quietly, enjoying music.

How has your involvement with CSED helped you?

Our connection with CSED started in 2023 and since then we have benefitted from help with our business plan, marketing, and consulting on various issues including becoming a non-profit corporation. Connection to people like Hai and Michael who have expertise in social enterprise has been invaluable, not only in terms of content, but also encouragement and knowing that there are other like-minded individuals doing great work in our community – you can see this in action at CSED’s Unleashed conference each year.

What advice do you have for someone who is developing their own social enterprise or social purpose business?

As much as I’d love to say that it’s just about having a good idea that is socially-minded, there’s a lot of knowledge that needs to be acquired, energy put in, and connections made over the long-haul so that your ‘good idea’ can come to fruition as a social enterprise. It may involve doing things you don’t love (for me it’s social media), but it is worth it when the mission of your social enterprise comes to life. Hearing frontline workers laugh together and breathe for a few moments of pause gives me energy to keep on doing the things that help us to continue (which includes of course, social media!).

What’s next for Soul Space?

The year ahead will involve continuing to support frontline workers through our retreats and collective care circles offered via community organizations. With our recent shift to becoming an independent non-profit organization, we will have our work cut out for us to complete the necessary administrative work like building our board, independently managing risk and finances, and creating a sustainable path forward. After that, I think the role of Soul Space in the community will continue, and evolve to offer new supports and services in support of frontline workers.

Is there anything else that you’d like to say that you haven’t already said?

If you’re unsure about the next step for your ‘good idea’ related to social enterprise, build community. That can start at CSED, but don’t go at it alone – there are other like-minded folks out there that you can collaborate rather than compete with.