9:30am to 4:00pm Eastern Time
Kingston Shrine Club
3260 Princess St

Co-op Outreach Conferences - Connect your co-op. Build the movement.

Co-op Outreach Conferences are one-day conferences for those interested in co-operatives and the new sharing economy, as well as board, staff and members of co-ops of all kinds. The conferences are hosted by the Ontario Co-operative Association, often in partnership with other co-operatives and credit unions.

Building on their first regional conferences held during the International Year of Co-operatives in 2012, this is a chance for co-operators to get together and share tips, learn best practices from local and provincial examples, build a support network, and increase the visibility of the movement in their region. A part of their Co-op Development and Engagement strategic directions and plans, the conferences have several objectives:

• support and strengthen co-op development
• connect co-ops and credit unions
• create sustainable regional support networks and clusters
• facilitate the sharing of best practices and reciprocal mentoring
• develop co-op awareness outside of the sector
• increase member engagement
• build a unified co-op movement

Each conference features presentations with local success stories, and made-in-your-area solutions. Because co-ops are built to serve their unique communities, what works in one area won’t always work in another. In addition, they’ll talk about connecting your co-op to a new generation of members, introduce new advocacy tools, and outline simple steps to build a regional co-op network.

GROUP DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE!  Register 2 or more people and receive a 20% discount!

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Objectives:

1. Share co-op stories
2. Build knowledge and skills
3. Develop co-ops and co-op networks

Materials to review pre-meeting:

1. Proposed Agenda
2. Blueprint for a Co-operative Decade
3. 2012 Kingston Regional Co-op Conference Evaluation Summary

Noon to 1pm Eastern Time

This webinar will build on the most recent Canadian statistics from the 2012 Canadian Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) Review and emerging SRI opportunitites in Canada. We will explore how consumers can positively impact society by engaging in SRI.

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About Brenda Plant

Brenda is a Partner at Ellio sustainability consultants, specializing in sustainability and responsible investment. She is also involved in the development of an affordable rental housing investment fund (for accredited investors). Brenda has an MSc in International Management from HEC Montréal, a BA in Humanities and a BSW from McGill University.

Brenda is a member of the Québec Association of Professionals in Sustainable Development (AProDD) and a signatory to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). She is well known in university circles (sits on the Advisory Committee for HEC Montréal’s Graduate Diploma in Management and Sustainability and lectured at Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University), in professional circles (consultant, Vice Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Capital Équitable – a fund dedicated to the development of fair trade, etc.), and in community circles (member of the Board of Directors and Impact Investment Committee of the Béati Foundation, cofounder of Cataléthique – a network of professionals working to apply CSR and sustainability principles in their practices, past member of the Board of Directors of the Responsible Investment Association of Canada (formerly SIO) and formerly Co-chairperson of Ethical Investors Group).

Recognized by Les Affaires as one of 15 women who will make change happen in Quebec, Brenda Plant is committed to investing her life energy in bettering the world. Brenda founded a public education website focusing on responsible consumption – Ethiquette, the responsible consumer network – which operated from 2005 to 2011. She relaunched Ethiquette in September 2014, this time in conjunction with the business school of the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) as a public education website on responsible investment.

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Marketing is something every business needs to do, and it’s something that you can do differently as a co-op. Join other co-operators to explore ways to market the co-operative advantage that we know and love, and learn from some success stories of other co-ops that have used the way that they work to make a marketing difference.

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Start Marketing the Co-op Advantage

Marketing is something every business needs to do, and it’s something that you can do differently as a co-op. Join other co-operators to explore ways to market the co-operative advantage that we know and love, and learn from some success stories of other co-ops that have used the way that they work to make a marketing difference.

Tips and Tricks

This two-hour workshop will be led by a panel of representatives from co-ops with marketing skills, and will focus on tips and tricks of the trade.

You will explore:

• Just what the co-op advantage is, and how to use it as a key marketing strategy
• Use of social media for co-op marketing
• Web-based marketing
• Member marketing
• And more!

Attend in-person or via teleconference.
If you can't make it to the workshop in person, BCCA training sessions are available by webinar or teleconference. We'll make it happen.

1:00pm to 2:30pm Central Time

Free Webinar

Following several decades of losing population, more than 80 communities in Manitoba fell below the minimum requirement of 1000 people to maintain their municipality status. In 2012, the Provincial government responded by an initiative of modernizing rural municipalities, with particular interest to smaller municipalities in the southwest. The amalgamation initiative was informed by applied research that examined functional economic regions as possible local boundaries. Based on where residents live and work, new rural regional municipal amalgamations were proposed. These findings along with provincial activities and resources shaped the process, while requiring local decisions, which resulted in 47 municipal amalgamations. This presentation will provide details related to the functional economic regions and overview the amalgamation chronology.

Discussions will include how you might characterize this initiative, including for example, was this initiative a marriage of top-down and bottom-up or was it an example of a negotiated approach where two levels of government played their own roles or was it simply an imposition on local autonomy?

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Presenting is Dr. Bill Ashton; the Director of Brandon University's Rural Development Institute (RDI). Bill continues to advance research and discourse on public policy, with particular interest in policy development processes.  His career as a practitioner and researcher has taken him across Canada and elsewhere, and he is currently active with topics of immigration, welcoming communities, and economic development in rural, northern, and remote areas.  Community based projects that contribute locally and provincially to economic, social and environmental development are important touchstones in Bill’s knowledge and experience.  He strives to work toward opportunities and develop partnerships that will make a difference within many organizations at different geographic scales and contribute to sustainability.

11:55am to 1:00pm Eastern Time

So many great minds working in community development are talking about the need to change, the urgency to transform services and operations in ways that not only fit our chaotic environment but influence its future as well. We tend to be rather good at seeing what should change and why, however, life becomes much more difficult when trying to figure out the how.

Upside Down Thinking is both a mindset and a tool that we can use to challenge the things that are so true for us that we don’t even question them anymore. It is a cognitive-creative methodology and is about more than crafting inquiry; it goes further to pose new realities or potential realities that run contrary to how we think and how we see our own identities within the context of our work.

Join Tamarack Thought Leaders Mark Holmgren and Elayne Greeley on January 22nd as they take a closer look at how what we create can stop us from creating, how what we think is good sometimes actually has negative impacts, and how we can become more innovative in our work by using purposefully ambitious thinking.

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Speakers

Mark Holmgren’s consulting practice has delivered social housing, strategic plans, new programs and services, innovations, evaluations, and research and analysis for a wide variety of organizations and departments including governments, human service agencies, funders, arts and culture groups, health organizations, educational institutions, and faith communities.

In early 2014, Mark was recognized by Tamarack Institute as one its national thought leaders and appointed to the Mayor of Edmonton’s Task Force on Eliminating Poverty.

Currently he is the CEO of Bissell Centre, a position he has held since the spring of 2011.

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Possibility aficionado, big picture thinker, collaborative team player, unabashed optimist and lover of natural history, that's Elayne Greeley in a nut shell along with all that ​i​s exciting and messy. By day Elayne has the privilege of working with a grand group of career practitioners and their ​community agencies in a partnership called CCEPP in St. John's, Newfoundland (www.ccepp.ca). She arrived at this work from the cultural sector and inserts as much creativity as she is allowed to by hosting groups differently and driving curiosity and learning within ​the sector.

Public policy is a key focus for CCEDNet.  Since our first National Policy Forum in 2001, we have actively engaged our members in identifying the most strategic policy changes that would create a more enabling environment for CED and contribute to stronger, more inclusive communities.

In anticipation of the 2015 federal election, CCEDNet's Policy Council has updated our policy priorities and we sought your input. 

This session was an opportunity for CCEDNet members and others to provide feedback on the proposed new priorities, and consider strategies for getting CED into party platforms for the election in 2015.

Download the Draft National Policy Priorities

PRESENTERS

Diana Jedig, Ontario Association of Community Futures Development Corporations (OACFDC)

Diana is CCEDNet Board Chair and represents CCEDNet on the People-Centred Economy Group, a national coalition of leading groups in the social economy, CED and impact investing fields.  She has been Executive Director of the OACFDC since 1994, she volunteers on the Board of the Community Futures Network of Canada and is a founding member of The Ontario Rural Council (now the Rural Ontario Institute)

David LePage, Accelerating Social Impact CCC

David is a member (and past Chair) of CCEDNet's Policy Council.  He is a Principal with Accelerating Social Impact CCC, Ltd. (ASI), one of Canada’s first incorporated social purpose hybrid corporations. Through ASI David provides direct support and strategic advice to blended value businesses, social enterprises and social finance developments. He is involved in multiple public policy initiatives and research projects to support the social enterprise ecosystem across Canada. ASI is a partner in launching and building the Buy Social Canada campaign.  He is the former Team Manager of Enterprising Non-Profits, where he led the effort to expand the enp social enterprise development and training model across Canada. He initiated Canada’s first Social Purchasing Portal in 2003.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• Draft National Policy Priorities for 2015
• Previous CCEDNet Policy Priorities
• National Summit on a People-Centred Economy (2010)
• CCEDNet's 2014 federal pre-budget brief
• More policy resources from our website toolbox