This Profile of Effective Practice is one of fifteen stories examining how innovative, community-based initiatives are using comprehensive approaches to improve social and economic conditions on a local level.

The Bois-Francs Community Development Corporation (CDCBF) intervenes on the administrative territory of the Arthabaska Regional County Municipality (RCM).

Like most regions in the vicinity of Montreal, the Arthabaska RCM went through difficult times in the beginning of the 1970s: many furniture and clothing companies closed down, leading to massive unemployment. In beginning of the 1980s, the community sector in the Bois-Francs felt the need for a dialogue on its practices and how they could be better coordinated. The community actors thus decided to implement a roundtable discussion of community organizations.

In 1984, 30 community organizations collaborated to establish the Bois-Francs Community Development Corporation. The first of its kind in Quebec, the CDCBF later served as a model for the development of more than forty CDCs in the province.