Findlay, I. M. ; Popham, J. ; Ince, P. ; Takahashi, S. (2013). Through the Eyes of  Women: What a Co-operative Can Mean in Supporting Women During Confinement and Integration. Saskatoon, SK: Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, University of Saskatchewan.

This research study considers criminalized women’s lived experiences while in custody and upon release. The study pays particular attention to women’s perceptions of institutional programming with the purpose of outlining service and other gaps and clarifying how co-operative initiatives might fill these gaps.

It explores how participation in a co-operative can impact the capacity of provincially sentenced women to negotiate incarceration and successfully reintegrate into the community upon release from custody. The study provides women the opportunity to voice their needs and hopes, their stories and experience of imprisonment, and their capacity for social, economic, cultural, and civic integration. It explores how living under conditions of confinement may structure women’s choices, their social, cultural, and civic identities, and shape their mental well-being and their capacity to manage their lives upon release — and what participating in a co-operative might mean for their capacities and choices.

Download the full report here.

Look at our complete annotated index to Social Economy reports here.

A delegation from iCOOP KOREA will be visiting our Centre from May 26 – 31, 2013.

iCOOP KOREA is one of the fast growing consumer co-operatives in South Korea and the second largest consumer co-op group in Korea. It has 116 local co-op stores and 75 local associations. Recently iCOOP KOREA successfully launched two organic food clusters, which are multi-billion dollar projects. As a leading supporter of ethical consumerism in civil society, it has engaged in various socioeconomic activities for protecting domestic agriculture and environment since 1998, when it was founded.

iCOOP KOREA business and activities cover direct-dealing of eco-friendly products, merchandising of more reliable processed foods, fair trade, improvement of food safety and free school lunch campaigns.

iCOOP KOREA has been running their own academic research centre and provides management courses for their managers and employees. They have various systems for member involvement in their co-operative governing process.

The Centre for the Study of Co-operatives’s visiting scholar Scott Kim will co-ordinate the Korean delegation and with the assistance of Centre staff has prepared a schedule that will provide opportunities for delegates to learn about co-operatives in Saskatchewan. The delegates have expressed a particular interest in learning about the co-operative movement in Saskatchewan, governance and member issues, and they wish to build ongoing relationships with Saskatchewan co-operative organizations and our research centre.

“We’ve thought that Saskatchewan region is one of the most important and energetic sites of Canadian co-operative movement. We are very pleased to have the chance for visiting Centre for the Study of Co-operatives which devoted a long time to co-operative researches on the ground. iCOOP Co-operative Institute has been seeking a model for the healthy relationship between local community, co-operative movement and an institute. Through this visit, we are looking forward to gaining implications from the fruitful outcome of your institute and hope to have the chance of mutual-learning.”

Dr. Yeom, Chan Hee
Chief Editor of Co-operatives Journal published by iCOOP KOREA
Cooperative Institute and Researcher, iCOOP KOREA Cooperative Institute

Visit the iCOOP KOREA English website.

The Centre for the Study of Co-operatives is pleased to be an organizing partner of the 2013 CU NextGen Leadership Intensive, 
a unique professional development experience exclusively for young and emerging credit union leaders. The Centre has been working with the National Young Leaders Committee of Credit Union Central of Canada to provide assistance with the logistics, and program content for their gathering.

Center fellows addressing the young leaders include Michael Gertler and Lou Hammond Ketilson. Michael will outline the role of the Centre in research and welcome participants and Lou will be participating as a speaker on a panel alongside the co-operative sector’s most successful CEO’s. After decades of research on leadership in co-operatives, the panel will provide an opportunity for Lou to share her insights with the credit union sector’s brightest minds.  To learn more about the program please visit the event website.

We are delighted to welcome Jaime Nicklas, who will be joining the staff at the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives from May through August. Jaime will be assisting with the digitization of our many historical co-op related photos, slides, pamphlets, and other memorabilia, all of which will be available for viewing online at the Co-op History Collection of Saskatchewan History Online. We were recently presented with a large collection of photographic items from long-time co-operators Arthur and Helma Dahlman of Calgary, who have been so good to to provide excellent documentation with each photo and slide. Jaime will have her hands full!

Jaime is currently working towards completing her English honours degree at the University of Saskatchewan. Professionally, her life has involved plenty of writing and editing. Her work includes articles for Saskatoon Express, as well as research and editing for John Gormley’s Left Out and former Lieutenant Governor Gordon Barnhart’s soon-to-be published book. Her impending position with the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives is particularly exciting for her, given her love of history—particularly Saskatchewan history—and penchant for sorting through old photographs and other memorabilia, just for the fun of it.

Outside of school Jaime spends her time, according to her, blowing far too much money on songs and movies from i-Tunes, wandering Broadway in search of a good cup of coffee, and reading books that have not been designated as required reading—although she reads plenty of those, too.

Please join us for this seminar in the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives Seminar Series 2012–13

Co-operatives as Sustainable Actors

Carolin Schröder, Center for Technology and Society, Technical University of Berlin
Visiting Professor, Centre for the Study of Co-operatives

Co-operatives offer promising conditions for an economically, ecologically, and socially sustainable future — after all, members not only promote their own interests and goals, but also contribute actively to the shaping of their local environment. And the fact that the co-operative movement boasts a large number of supporters who explicitly appreciate its sustainable and democratic nature suggests an even greater potential. Co-operative, i.e., collective, self-responsible action may be the result of an inspiration to become involved and of mutual support among the members, but it can also have an effect that goes beyond the co-operative, e.g., when co-operative principles are applied to neighbourhoods and districts, in the form of civic engagement.

Results from an interdisciplinary research project on German co-ops show huge differences when it comes to realizing these potentials. Using examples from this study, Dr. Schröder will focus on the technical, social, and political dimensions of co-operative sustainability.

Carolin Schröder is a postdoctoral researcher at the Technical University of Berlin. With a background in urban planning, she has been focussing on participation and co-operation in urban and regional planning as well as urban governance and management forms. Her work is dedicated to the problems and opportunities offered by interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, a recurring subject in her publications. Over the last decade, she has co-ordinated a number of research projects, has taught at several universities, and is currently responsible for the broad research area “participation” at the Center for Technology and Society, Technical University of Berlin.

Monday, 6  May 2013

3:30 – 4:30 pm

Room 146  Kirk Hall

University of Saskatchewan

The Centre is pleased to welcome PhD student Sugandhi Wickremarachchi to the team for the spring term.  Sugandhi will assist with the production of an electronic publication that summarizes the presentations from the Co-operating to Build A Better West conference.  The conference, held in November of 2012, brought over 300 co-operators together in Saskatoon in celebration of the United Nation’s declaration of 2012 as the International Year of Co-operatives.  You can view the program and some of the presentation documents on our website.

Sugandhi Wickremarachchi graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor of Arts in International Development Studies and Women’s Studies in 2002 and, prior to her return to academia in 2010, she worked with government and non-profit organizations in the field of HIV and hepatitis C.  She is currently pursuing a PhD in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan, with a focus on food environments and health outcomes.  She is a board member of the Canadian Women’s Health Network and occasionally volunteers as a “Stitch’n’Bitch” instructor at AIDS Saskatoon. On any given day, you can find her furiously knitting legwarmers as she tries to survive yet another prairie winter.

Please join us for a reception to welcome visiting professor Carolin Schröder from the Technische Universitat in Berlin, who will be with us April–June 2013.

Thursday, 25 April 2013

4:00 – 7:00 pm

The Lounge, University Club
101 Administration Place
University of Saskatchewan

Complimentary hors d’oeuvres, nonalcoholic punch, coffee, and tea / Cash bar

RSVP to Patty or Karen by Friday, 19 April 2013
(306) 966–8509
Email: coop.studies@usask.ca

The Centre for the Study of Co-operatives is pleased to introduce Dr. Carolin Schröder, who will be a visiting professor at the Centre during April, May, and June 2013. Carolin is a postdoctoral researcher at the Technical University of Berlin. With a background in urban planning, she has been focussing on participation and co-operation in urban and regional planning as well as urban governance and management forms. Her work is dedicated to the problems and opportunities offered by interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, a recurring subject in her publications. Over the last decade, she has co-ordinated a number of research projects, has taught at several universities, and is currently responsible for the broad research area “participation” at the Centre for Technology and Society, Technical University of Berlin.

Lou Hammond Ketilson

The Canadian Co-operative Association has launched an ambitious research project examining co-operative impacts on poverty reduction for co-op members in rural Africa and Canada.

This collaborative project, financed by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and involving research institutions in Canada and Africa, will look specifically at the impact of integrated models  of financial and agricultural co-operatives development.

The research will be led by Lou Hammond Ketilson, our director here at the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, along with the School of Agricultural Sciences at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, and Moshi University College of Co-operative and Business Studies in Tanzania.

Two of our Centre Scholars, JoAnn Jaffe (University of Regina) and Cindy Hanson (University of Regina) will be collaborating in the research project with Lou.

The research aims to gain a better understanding of how to sustainably improve livelihoods and reduce poverty in rural communities. The general objective of the research is to improve programming in rural development both in Africa and Canada by obtaining new knowledge about integrated co-operative models in practice. In particular, it will assess whether rural development through co-operatives works better when the co-ops are more formally integrated, and if so, under what conditions this integration works best.

The research and dissemination of results will take place over a three year period. The budget for the initiative is more than $610,000, with IDRC contributing $450,00 and the remainder contributed in cash and in kind by the participating partners.

We, at the Centre, congratulate all involved and look forward to supporting Lou in this project.

Please see the full press release, including contact information, here.  More information will be posted on our website as it becomes available.

The application deadline for the annual Norm Bromberger Research Bursary of $2,000 is June 30, 2013.

The Norm Bromberger Research Bursary was established in recognition of the outstanding contributions made by Norm Bromberger to the development of credit unions and co-operatives in Saskatchewan and across Canada. Bromberger was Research Director and the Chief Executive Officer of Credit Union Central for a total of 27 years of service within the credit union system of Saskatchewan. The bursary encourages research in the area of co-operatives and credit unions.

Find details about the bursary and download the application form here.

 Please join us for this seminar sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives and the Saskatoon Peace Coalition.