In this Issue
- Profile: Portage La Prairie Community Revitalization Corporation
- Canadian CED Network News
- Saskatchewan 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 coordinator 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.
Meet our Members
Community University Institute for Social Research
Community University Institute for Social Research facilitates partnerships between the university and the larger community in order to engage in relevant social research that supports a deeper understanding of our communities and that reveals opportunities for improving our quality of life.
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.
Saskatchewan CED News
Eat Where You Live - Building a Social Economy of Local Food in Western Canada
The goal of the study was to learn as much as possible about food security concerns in the inner cities of Winnipeg and Saskatoon — areas characterized by low incomes, multifaceted social problems, racial divisions, and dependence on emergency food. They have also been termed “food deserts” — neighbourhoods where access to good food at affordable prices is significantly lower than in other parts of the city. The researchers sought to find out whether CED initiatives and improved access to local food could alleviate the food security concerns of low-income, inner-city residents.
Building Respectful Relations: Community-University Research Partnerships in the Social Economy
The Centre for the Study of Co-operatives is hosting this seminar in Saskatoon on January 20, 2011. The guest speaker is Professor Gayle Broad of Algoma University College. This presentation will examine five community-university research partnerships in the social economy for learnings that can assist researchers in meeting the challenge of developing respectful relations between communities and universities. It concludes that researchers themselves can be the pivotal point of relationship-building.
Click here for more information.
New Co-op Profiles on SCA Website
Saskatchewan Co-operative Association is pleased to debut the first series of Co-operative Profiles on our website. Periodically, a new profile will appear on the home page of the SCA website as the “Feature Co-op” while the rest of the profiles are available by clicking here.
Presently, there are 16 profiles on the site. If your co-operative would like to be profiled, please contact Kim at 244-3702 or kim.vindegsmall@sask.coop.
(Source: SCA's December Co-operative Spotlight)
Save the Date! SCA & CCEDNet Regional Event
Saskatchewan Co-operative Association (SCA) together with CCEDNet will be hosting their CCEDNet-SK Regional Event on April 8, 2011. This one-day event will feature a series of workshops focusing on Community Economic Development and co-operatives. Registration will be opening soon.
Visit SCA and CCEDNet's websites for more information. If you have any questions please contact Carla, Regional Event Co-ordinator, at 244-3702 or carla.paul@sask. coop.
The 1st Saskatchewan Food Summit
This conference invites participants to "Come author the future of our sustainable food system." Sessions and workshops will discuss barriers/challenges and examine opportunities at every level of the food supply chain from food policy to issues of market accessibility.
Registration for this Summit, being held on March 2-3 in Saskatoon, will be open until Febraury 26.
Click here for more information
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)
2011 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.
Click here to register
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