In this Issue
- Profile: Portage La Prairie Community Revitalization Corporation
- Canadian CED Network News
- Northern Territories CED News
- CED Tool
- National CED News
- Job Postings
Profile: Portage La Prairie Community Revitalization Corporation
The name of Manitoba’s fourth largest city, Portage La Prairie, is derived from the French word portage, which means to carry a canoe over land between waterways. For three years, the Portage La Prairie Community Revitalization Corporation (PCRC) has helped portage its city over community-based barriers by working with the community to address issues such as affordable housing, safety, poverty and neighbourhood engagement.
The PCRC was established in 2007 when the Province of Manitoba expanded its Neighbourhoods Alive! (NA!) program into Portage La Prairie. The NA! program provides support for urban neighbourhoods across Manitoba through community-driven revitalization strategies. To ensure its efforts were community-led, the PCRC developed a list of priorities and related goals based on community identified needs to guide their activities over its first five years.
Among the top priorities of the PCRC are housing, poverty reduction, community engagement, affordable recreation, capacity building, and organizational development. In three short years, the PCRC has made great strides towards addressing these objectives. For the second year in a row, the PCRC recently offered a free Safety Audit Training course, which helps community members identify potential safety problems, and contribute towards making their neighbourhoods safer. Through a community engagement grant, the PCRC has helped fund, support, and/or coordinate an annual Halloween Bash for kids, and the Share the World event, which highlights the city’s multiculturalism. In addition to funding, the PCRC has also provided valuable advice and logistical support for local non-profit organizations in the start-up phase.
One of the PCRC’s most successful initiatives is the home beautification project, which offers small grants to homeowners to make exterior improvements to their homes. This project has also helped support local businesses as the PCRC has developed partnerships with local hardware retailers in providing supplies. In its first year, the program contributed towards the renovation of thirteen homes.
The PCRC began the New Year in a new and larger location, after outgrowing its original office space. With that rate of expansion, the future of the PCRC looks bright, and as new issues and concerns arise, the citizens of Portage La Prarie can rest assured that the PCRC will help them cross those paths, or portage those streams. With the support of the PCRC, Portage La Prairie is becoming a stronger, safer, and more engaged community.
Visit www.portagecrc.com for more information
A Portage La Praire home after receiving a grant through the PCRC's home beautification project. The project has been integral in fostering a sense of community engagement and pride in the city.
Portage La Prairie community members take in some culture at the PCRC's first Share the World event, which featured entertainment, food, and art from the various cultures and countries that make up Portage's diversity
Canadian CED Network News
CCEDNet 2011 Membership Renewal
Active promotion and initiation of forward-thinking activities that combat poverty are what sow the seeds of community development and lighten the burden of economic insecurity. Through these activities, our aim remains supporting our members and creating a national vehicle for collective action to strengthen communities.
Your membership is essential to our success as a movement. Click here to renew your CCEDNet membership now for the 2011 calendar year.
CCEDNet on Facebook & YouTube
Looking for more information? Want to stay in the CED loop in between CCEDNet newsletters? Visit CCEDNet's Facebook Fan Page for all the latest updates on CED events, news, and reports from around the country!
You can also subscribe to our growing YouTube Channel for great profiles on CED initiatives and informative talks with CCEDNet staff on community development issues.
- Featured Video: One of our latest additions is a video on the Winnipeg-based worker co-operative Organic Planet
Meet a Create Action Intern
Each year, CCEDNet member organizations hire emerging CED leaders for six month internships with the help of the CCEDNet's CreateAction Internship Program. There are currently 40 interns working across the country with various CED initiatives, organizations, and programs.
Alexis Nazeravich has been influenced by the diversity of her hometown of Winnipeg from a young age. Her past experiences have ranged from teaching cultural dance, to working with children and youth in rural Manitoba, volunteering in Mexico in an orphanage, treeplanting, cooking in remote bush camps,and working with independent food establishments. She is working on her Master Gardening Certificate and will soon begin learning more about growing/wild harvesting, preparing and using medicinal herbs through a local herbalist.
She took a break from her position as a Land Steward on a farm 30km outside of Winnipeg to engage with Food Security, Food Access and Greening Initiatives with the North End through the North End Food Security Network. One of her roles in this position involves assisting local gardeners in planning for 2011 and securing funds to continue their gardening and programming. She will also be responsible for assisting with the organization of workshops and sharing events, consulting over new garden proposals and assisting in the development of an implementation plan to work with local retailers to address some of the North End’s retail food access concerns.
Northern Territories CED News
Social Economy Stories features Yukon organization
The Social Economy stories published here are designed to provide practitioners’ perspectives on what the Social Economy means to them and their communities. These “stories” capture the human face of the sector and demonstrate the Social Economy as a real movement that is addressing social, economic and environmental challenges.
One profile is on BYTE - a youth initiated and directed Social Economy organization located in Whitehorse, Yukon. The organization uses the arts, creative public actions, performance, forums, and camps to help youth develop skills, confidence, and a strong voice within their communities.
Click here to read the full document
The Role of Co-operative Enterprise in the Social Economy of Repulse Bay, Nunavut
This paper examines the role that co-operative development has had in northern history and considers the current conditions, and continued influence of the Arctic Co-operatives network. More specifically, it looks at the community economy in Repulse Bay, Nunavut, and it outlines the role that the Naujat Co-op has played within its social economy. This case study provides a snapshot of the operations of Arctic Co-operatives Ltd in a small, non-decentralized community in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut, in order to obtain an understanding of the current challenges, and apparent opportunities facing community co-operatives and the ACL Federation at large.
CDI Northern Projects: Potluck Community Co-operative
Potluck Community Co-operative is planning to open a local food retail store in Whitehorse which aims to increase both the availability and access to local food. The 80-member co-op has determined that the city needs a year-round local food store that will partner with the farmer's market. The co-op will also use CED/ICP Funding to provide an alternative to the informal buying clubs that currently offer natural foods in the Yukon.
See below for more information
The No Place for Poverty – Anti-Poverty Workshop Report
The No Place for Poverty – Anti-Poverty Workshop was initiated and organized by Alternatives North, a volunteer social justice coalition, and YWCA Yellowknife, a non-profit organization dedicated to the well-being and independence of people, particularly women. The Workshop and resulting Poverty Report was a response to the need for a broad, comprehensive, integrated anti-poverty strategy to address the many issues that influence, and are influenced by poverty. The Workshop Report outlines the key points of workshop presenters the participants' advice on a process and priorities for moving forward on poverty.
CED Tool
Communities Matrix - 69 Tools, Techniques, and Resources for Communities
The Matrix is a result of Centre for Innovative and Entrpreneurial Leadership's research and experience in assisting communities to become more vibrant, entrepreneurial, and innovative. The CIEL has noted that communities vary in their ability to make decisions about their future, and in their ability to carry through on identified courses of action. The Matrix divides the community development process into four phases: Chaos, Emergence, Vision, and Actualization.
The tools and resources in this document are designed to be used according to an organization's stage on the communities matrix. CIEL, where possible, sought to classify tools and techniques that were relatively simple to self- administer, easy to understand and relatively inexpensive.
Click here to download the Communities Matrix
National CED News
CED Book Club: Aboriginal, Northern, and Community Economic Development
John Loxley has written extensively on community economic development. In his newest book, Aboriginal, Northern, and Community Economic Development, Loxley examines various approaches to economic development, placing each within a broader theoretical and policy perspective, and considering its growth potential and class impact. Accessible and theoretically sophisticated, the book blends international development theory with northern Canadian and Aboriginal realities.
New Report on the social determinants of Canada's Health Care System
Unless governments change their approach to addressing the needs of poorer and socially disadvantaged Canadians, we are destined to continue to spend large amount of dollars on our health care system. Governments must expand their approach to health promotion in order to tackle the major societal factors that lead to poor health and to take pressure off health care budgets.
The report Stepping It Up: Moving the Focus from Health Care in Canada to a Healthier Canada indicates that health disparities play a significant role in health system costs. It states that ongoing spending on acute care and programs encouraging a healthy lifestyle is not enough to improve the overall health of Canadians, particularly those who live in or close to poverty.
Click here to view the full document
Aboriginal Co-op Development Program Accepting Proposals
The newly-created First Nations, Métis and Inuit Co-operative Development Program has issued its first call for funding proposals. The program, created by the Canadian Co-operative Association (CCA) in consultation with national Aboriginal organizations, will fund between five and 10 projects per year for the next five years, with an average grant of $5,000 to $10,000. The deadline for applications is March 1, 2011.
Click here for or more information or for the application form and guide.
New Release for JRCD
The Journal of Rural and Community Development (JRCD) is pleased to announce the release of a special double issue (Volume 5, Issue 1/2) in December 2010. The topic for this issue, Rural Tourism, provoked overwhelming interest. This double issue contains ten articles, three case studies, and one policy evaluation and review. The JRCD is a free online journal based in the Rural Development Institute, Brandon University.
(Credit: The RDI Update, January 2010)
2010 CDI Projects Announced
The federal government has announced more co-op projects that are receiving funding in the 2010-2011 round of the Co-operative Development Initiative (CDI)'s Innovative Co-operative Projects (ICP) component.
In December, the department announced that 39 projects in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Yukon were being funded, in addition to those previously announced in Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
View a full list of the 2010-11 projects
(Credit: CCA December News Brief)
Why Cities? Why Poverty? Tele-learning Workshop
The first call in the Canada's Cities Reducing Poverty series, taking place on January 27, will feature Brock Carlton, CEO of the Canadian Federation of Municipalities. Mr. Carlton will discuss a recent report exploring poverty, income inequality and the concept of social infrastructure. The report introduces the concept of social infrastructure, the support system provided by municipal governments and made up of direct social services, such as affordable housing, emergency shelters and subsidized childcare, as well as public services like transit, recreation and libraries.
Job Postings
For the latest CED postings visit the National and Regional job pages on CCEDNet's website
National | AB | SK | MB | North
Positions to post? Send them to breimer@ccednet-rcdec.ca