Strategic Planning Session for the Northern Ontario Research Program

Last Updated on April 8th, 2008

The planning session held on April 20-21, 2006 at Algoma University College brought together academics and representatives from community research organizations in Northern Ontario. The focus of the meetings was to assess the group’s objectives in relation to the social economy over the next five years and to determine what available resources and what type of research could be conducted to support those goals.

The meetings began with an overview of the Social Economy and of the Linking, Learning, Leveraging Social Economy Research Project. In the Strategic Planning Session, the groups highlighted the need to include the “three solitudes” in Northern Ontario, which include: First Nations, Francophones and marginalized groups such as women and youth. These groups have been largely excluded from the old economy and the participants saw a need to bridge the gap and work together with them.

Participants also listed the current projects they were involved with that were part of the social economy. Nearly 80 different activities already underway were posted (see photo), highlighting a strong basis with which to further develop the Social Economy project in Northern Ontario. As part of the session, participants were also asked to think about the vision for the project and identify attributes that would be included in this vision. Some of the ideas that emerged were:

Diversity
Self-sufficiency
Respect and belonging
Holistic
Local control
Sustainability

Participants were put into groups to discuss critical questions and to come up with an action analysis to respond to the questions. Question or considerations included:

How to break the isolation of francophone workers in communities?
Shifting awareness of the Social Economy
What can CESD provide?
What does sustainability mean? Can Northern Ontario communities be sustainable?
Respect and belonging for youth
Networking and dialogue
Sharing knowledge to be inspired by international contexts in both analysis and action
How do we make the community development movement self-supporting?
Networking and communication tools

The meeting concluded with identifying some of the issues to be addressed before the next meeting. Topics to be included are the principles of the research as well as the communication process for the network. It was agreed that Algoma University would be the host for the annual meetings. CESD would also send out project proposal templates to assist the process.

Member of the Canadian Social Economy Research Partnerships