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Welcome to the web site of the Linking, Learning, Leveraging SSHRC-funded research project investigating the Social Economy. This project is comprised of multiple community partner organizations, academic researchers, and university students. See our Project Overview for more information.
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The Importance of Policy for Community Economic Development: A Case Study of the Manitoba Context by Brendan Reimer, Dan Simpson, Jesse Hajer and John Loxley (CL5-04-MB). Please see the Final Report (pdf) for this project.
A bit about the project:
Advancing CED policy is a difficult task. Part of this difficulty lies in understanding the channels through which policy decisions are made and the distinctions among different levels of policy. Another challenge is devising a strategy for convincing those who have power to implement policy that supports CED to actually do so. Even if good policy is adopted, there remains the additional task of seeing that it is adequately implemented. This paper sheds some light on these difficult undertakings in the Manitoba context.
While this paper took the Manitoba context as a case study of how policy works and how to advance it, the lessons here may well be useful for promoting policy in different regions across Canada. The review of what policy actually consists of should also be helpful for understanding policy in any jurisdiction, and it is hoped that the review of policy proposals for Manitoba provides a useful set of examples for the type of policy objectives that could be pursued elsewhere.
See the final report for more information.
Please see the complete list of final Linking, Learning, and Leveraging project reports here.
Michael Chartier is the recipient of this year’s University of Saskatchewan Thesis Award in the category of the Professional and Applied Social Sciences which recognizes excellence and original quality in graduate student research, for his thesis “Adult Education and the Social Economy: Rethinking the Communitarian Pedagogy of Watson Thomson”. Michael undertook the research to support his thesis with the support of a Linking, Learning, Leveraging scholarship. See more details about his research here.
Michael’s work, which covers the work of radical educator Watson Thomson and the Saskatchewan Adult Education Division, sheds new light on this little known period in Saskatchewan’s political, educational, and economic history which saw the development of over 100 cooperative enterprises and 500 adult study groups throughout the mid-1940s.
Michael was also the winner of the 2008 F.J.H. Fredeen Memorial Scholarship.
Congratulations, Michael! Well done!
Congratulations to Colin Anderson who has won a Fulbright Scholarship to support a year of fieldwork in Oregon starting September 2009.
Colin has done some exciting and impacting social economy research through the Linking, Learning, Leveraging Project. See his projects, Harvest Moon Society Marketing Cooperative: Building Social Capital through an Alternative Food Economy and Harvest Moon Society Marketing Cooperative: Building Social Capital through an Alternative Food Economy and Beyond Local: Building Urban-Rural Solidarity Through Food Relationships.
Visit the Social Economy Governance Portal here.
The material on this website has been gathered from the best sources in corporate governance, co-operative governance and social economy and third sector governance. While governance is a broad topic and no consensus exists on best practice, we hope that you will find these materials useful in investigating governance in the social economy. Topics are organized under the headings of Models of Governance, Tools for Excellence, Building Organizational Culture, Community Planning and Resilience, Keeping it Legal, Education and Research and Professional Services.
The Social Economy Governance Portal also offers case studies on effective governance in existing social enterprises, a dictionary of governance terms, a list of books, journals and magazines on the topic and a list of all the websites sourced in the construction of this website. You may use the governance blog to communicate with practitioners and researchers on topics relevant to governance of social enterprises and may post or receive information on various governance conferences and events occurring in Canada and internationally. Enjoy!
This website is a direct outcome of the SSHRC-funded Linking, Learning, Leveraging Project entitled, Toolkit for Empowering Practices in Social Economy Governance and Planning, for which Murray Fulton is the academic researcher and principal investigator, Quintin Fox is the community researcher, and Karlah Rudolph is the student researcher.
The Social Economy Student Network has recognized Monica Juarez Adeler as their Student Researcher of the Month for May 2009. Read more about Monica here.
For information about Monica’s research project for which the report is in the final formatting stage, please follow this link: Building a Tax Policy Framework to Enable Co-operative Development.
Monica has recently taken on a new role with the Linking, Learning, Leveraging Project as an administrative assistant working under the direct guidance of Dr. Jino Distasio, Director of the Institute of Urban Studies at the University of Winnipeg, and the Manitoba regional administrator for the Linking, Learning, Leveraging project.
Congratulations, Monica!
From the MaRS website:
“MaRS has scanned the global social finance landscape — with input from local and global thought leaders and practitioners — to determine the opportunities and challenges supporting the growth of social ventures in Ontario. The outcome is our latest whitepaper, Social Venture Finance: Enabling solutions to complex social problems.
This whitepaper, generously supported by the Government of Ontario, provides an introduction to social venture financing and will be the first in a series discussing the opportunities and challenges faced by social ventures.”
Please email Heather Acton to alert her to conferences and calls for papers that should be included in this list of upcoming conferences and meetings about co-operatives, the social economy, social enterprise, community economic development, community-based research, sustainable societies, and other associated topics. Thanks!
Newly added events appear in green.
Link to Conference Website: http://www.impactyouthsustainability.ca/en/
| Achieving sustainability requires a multi-disciplinary approach and a broad social commitment. It also requires the energy and passion of youth.
That’s why The Co-operators has launched an unprecedented partnership of business, academia and non-government organisations to bring together students from all fields of study from across Canada to develop and implement real sustainability solutions for their current lives and their future careers. If you are between 19-25 and attending a Canadian university or college in any discipline, apply now for this extraordinary opportunity.
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Please see the full news report and additional photos at SOOTODAY.com.
Passengers boarding the Algoma Passenger Train.
All aboard for Searchmont
by Donna Hopper (SooToday.com / Sunday, January 11, 2009)
One hundred rail-savvy adventurers boarded a train this morning for Searchmont for the Trains, Plains and Slopes event organized by the Coalition for Algoma Passenger Trains (CAPT).
The day’s activities included skiing, snowboarding, toboggan obstacle races, snowshoeing and orienteering.
Following the success of the Group of Seven Train Event in September of last year, Trains, Plains and Slopes is the first of what organizers hope will be many CAPT-hosted rail excursions in 2009.
CAPT co-chair Al Errington told SooToday.com that the event was planned “to bring attention to the local passenger train and demonstrate its potential.”
“We should be able to fill this train all the time,” Errington said.
Initiated in 2006, CAPT advocates use of the ACR line as an economic, historical and cultural asset.
To learn more about CAPT, purchase an official t-shirt or tote bag, or obtain a CAPT membership, please visit www.captrains.ca
See more details about this Linking Learning Leveraging Project, including the final project report, here.
Dr. Lou Hammond Ketilson presents.
On January 8, 2009, Dr. Lou Hammond Ketilson (The LLL project’s principal investigator) visited Victoria, British Columbia where she gave the following two presentations, hosted by the University of Victoria Faculty of Business and the BC Institute for Co-operative Studies:
Getting the Message Out: Successful Models for Co-operative Enterprise Development
What resources are needed to support the growth of co-operative enterprises? How do you create synergy and cohesion among local co-ops? Many different models for supporting co-operative enterprise development have been used over the years, with varying degrees of success. The federation model, co-operative development councils and co-op development centres are three such models. This presentation introduces the various models and highlight the factors that have contributed to success.
You will find the MP3 of this lecture, the PowerPoint as a PDF and photos from the event at the BCICS website.
Financing Aboriginal Enterprise: Is there a role for Co-operative Models?
Aboriginal Financial Institutions (AFIs) are a key source of business financing and support services for Aboriginal entrepreneurs. AFIs provide developmental loans to fill gaps resulting from private lenders’ failure to provide commercial loans to Aboriginal businesses. Evaluations of existing AFIs question the sustainability of these developmental lenders over the long term. At the same time, the emerging Aboriginal private sector continues to mature and business financing needs are becoming more diverse. Against this backdrop, the current roles and activities of AFIs may become less relevant to the market place. This presentation will examine the feasibility of using co-operative models of financing for supporting Aboriginal enterprise development.
You will find the MP3 of this lecture and the PowerPoint as a PDF at the BCICS website.
Member of the Canadian Social Economy Research Partnerships
Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada / Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada
We support CAPT
