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MAPPING ETHNOCULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS IN BRANDON AND RURAL MANITOBA Developing strong, resourceful ethnocultural organizations that can meet newcomers and members’ needs impacts the successful settlement and retention of immigrants in communities. Ethnocultural organizations must be encouraged to build capacity as they have an important role to play in ensuring welcoming communities, community economic development, and immigrant service provision. The objective of this research is to increase understandings of ethnocultural organizations in rural centres. This project will take recommendations from a CED report on ethnocultural social enterprises and build linkages between ethnocultural communities and social enterprises while also generating ideas and opportunities for ethnocultural organizations to build capacity to address the key issues and needs of its members. A case-study approach will be adopted to investigate ethnocultural organizations in three rural Manitoban communities. Information will be gleaned through semi-formal interviews with those involved in the organizations. Also, to obtain a policy and program perspective, consultations will be conducted with local government and key stakeholders. The final report of this project will act as a resource to others wishing to build capacity in non-government organizations and social enterprises to serve the immigrant community.
WHEN EVERY DAY BRINGS A NEW EMERGENCY: BUILDING COMMUNITY RESILIENCE TO DISASTER IN A HIGH-RISK NEIGHBOURHOOD This project focuses on the role of the social economy in increasing community resilience to crisis situations. It will map conditions and services in the social economy that “make the community vulnerable or enhance its ability to respond to and recover from emergencies”. High-income neighbourhoods can easily contain and quickly recover from small emergencies. Inner-city neighbourhoods are more vulnerable to sudden accidents that can escalate into disasters for those “living on the edge”. In the case of a natural or man-made disaster, there is little to buffer the poor, people with disabilities, and the marginalised. This research will provide resilience profiles of three communities in Winnipeg in order to highlight the challenges to inner-city communities in preparing for emergencies.
BEYOND LOCAL: BUILDING URBAN-RURAL SOLIDARITY THROUGH FOOD RELATIONSHIPS Canadian farm families are facing increasing adversity related to rising input costs, fluctuating commodity prices, disease, drought and declines in rural infrastructure and services. However, farmers have been long accustomed to adversity and are finding ways to adapt to a changing rural and farm landscape. Across Canada, local food marketing collectives are emerging and finding increased social, economic and environmental value as an alternative to the global export-oriented agro-food system. At the same time, a growing demand by consumers for locally produced food is prompting and supporting these initiatives. In Phase I of this project (below) we followed one such farmer group, the Harvest Moon Society Local Food Initiative, through the development phase of their marketing collective. Through interviews with farmers, consumers and retailers, we found that priorities regarding local food differed greatly within and among these stakeholder groups. However, all found the concept of “local food” to be attractive. Indeed, local food has the potential to connect multiple stakeholders around a common set of values and to build greater awareness regarding differences in their values. It is important to better understand the role of local food initiatives in the social economy and to create accessible educational and informational material as a tool to bridge gaps in understanding between participants in local food systems. In this phase II project, representatives from local food initiatives in Western Canada and other key informants will be interviewed. These interviews will be video recorded, combined with video captured from interviews in phase I of this project, analyzed and edited into a compelling video documentary that is readily accessible to all stakeholders and decision makers.
HARVEST MOON SOCIETY MARKETING CO-OPERATIVE: BUILDING SOCIAL CAPITAL THROUGH AN ALTERNATIVE FOOD ECONOMY Rural areas in Canada are currently facing a myriad of issues contributing to rural decline and are in the process of redefining themselves to adjust to a changing rural landscape. While the economic dynamics of community development are important, it is clear that social and environmental components are necessary as well. The role of the voluntary sector and co-operatives in simultaneously building social and economic capital are increasingly recognized and play a central role in rural rejuvenation, however most studies of this nature have focused on urban communities. The Harvest Moon Society (HMS) and the University of Manitoba Environmental Conservation Laboratory are working collaboratively with a group of producers in south-western Manitoba who are in the early stages of developing a producer-driven collective marketing co-operative. The producer group has self-identified as a social enterprise committed to increasing the profitability of production, building healthy communities and environment, and working towards a just and sustainable food system. This community-based research project will identify how new generation co-operatives, and specifically those focused on local food systems, increase social cohesion and social capital both within the immediate marketing group, the larger communities they are nested within, and among the diverse stakeholders represented in the food system. A combination of individual interviews, focus groups and questionnaires will be used to gain insight into the social economy as it relates to local food systems. This advocacy research study will employ participatory action research methods that will at once give voice to producers, benefit the community and contribute to the theoretical literature on the linkages between the social economy and risk and adaptation in rural communities.
EAT WHERE YOU LIVE: BUILDING A SOCIAL ECONOMY OF LOCAL FOOD IN WESTERN CANADA The subjects of this research project are those social enterprises engaged in the production and distribution of local food in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. This includes community farms, community gardens, farmers markets, and co-operative food distribution networks. The research objective is to assess the possibilities for expanding the social economy of local food as an alternative to the dominant global food system. It will also examine the obstacles faced by social enterprises in the food sector, and suggest means by which these obstacles may be overcome and food security for communities increased. The methodology will be essentially qualitative, relying on interviews with key actors committed to developing and maintaining social enterprises in the food sector. Members of these community organizations will be actively involved as participants in the research. The goal is to achieve an understanding of the day to day experiences of these social enterprises. It is hoped that this research will shed light on some of the daunting challenges faced by community organizations attempting to produce and distribute food to their clients and patrons. The success stories will be highlighted – those social enterprises that have succeeded in the food sector and the lessons that can be derived from their success. From a policy point of view, the research will specify the obstacles that must be overcome if the social economy of local food is to flourish. Recommendations will be put forward for concrete measures that can be put in place by government, which will directly benefit social enterprises engaged in the food sector.
BUILDING A TAX POLICY FRAMEWORK TO ENABLE CO-OP DEVELOPMENT This research project will identify effective tax policy models and strategies of policy advancement for the co-operative sector. This project will draw on a comparative analysis of tax models from Spain (i.e. Mondragon Co-op) and Italy (i.e. Emilia Romagna region) and will include a scan of tax policy and legislation regarding co-operatives in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Northern Ontario. The objective of the research is to analyze different tax policies that have played a key role in the development of the co-operative sector and in creating sector controlled, self-sustaining co-operative development and financing tools by exploring the possibilities of parlaying the research results from the international models into appropriate models in Canada, with specific consideration to the Manitoba context. In doing so, this research will build on existing literature regarding tax models and policies, supports and barriers, and the various factors that contributed to the sustainability of the co-operative development in various parts of the world. A review of the tax legislation in key tax systems (namely Spanish, Italian, and Canadian at the federal/provincial level) will also be necessary. It is anticipated that supportive tax policies will be identified as a key factor for impacting how the social economy can be enhanced through improved support for co-operative development. Moreover, effective models for applicability to the Canadian or Manitoba context will also be revealed through the research. The research will lead to policy recommendations for government and the co-operative sector that will address gaps and barriers, as well as enhanced support, influencing co-operative development. The research will also identify effective strategies for advancing the recommended policy changes.
COMMUNITY RESEARCH HUB: A CASE STUDY IN SOCIAL ECONOMY The focus of this social economy project is on determining the viability and structure of community-based social enterprise, specifically; it is a study of the initial stages of an enterprise that provides services to meet demand for research on and in the inner city. It examines the steps needed to create a sustainable social enterprise. The project is also contributing to understanding of the social economy by describing employment conditions and social relations of a non-profit that is integrated with the neighbourhood economy. Karl Polanyi (1983) has identified four economic patterns: free market, redistribution, reciprocity and domestic administration. The social economy encompasses these four patterns and any sustainable social enterprise must identify and take into consideration local livelihoods that are expressed in these four patterns. The Spence Neighbourhood Association (SNA) has confirmed that residents in the inner city have developed valuable research skills working as interviewers and project staff for, among others, faculty at the University of Winnipeg (Capacity Inventory Project, 2006), and in positions in the private sector. The Community Research Hub (CRH) is taking on contracts and employing residents in quality community-based research. Community workers and researchers have found that funds earmarked for community development often flow to people and organizations outside of the target community, defying the principles of CED that many of these funding sources would prefer to promote. The research will determine whether basic community research skills can be supplied as a sustainable enterprise, eventually providing services beyond the boundaries of the inner-city. CRH workers will provide a range of services from surveying and focus group facilitation to translation, transcription and courier services, drawing on local knowledge including awareness of the social dynamics of the multiethnic city core. Workers and residents, based on their awareness of the social and economic relations that define the social economy, are constructing the research hub. The approach is action research, combining on-going community consultation, market survey, development of training modules, interviews with CRH workers and employers, and study group learning and discussion.
BUILDING A POLICY FRAMEWORK FOR CED AND THE SOCIAL ECONOMY This Participatory Action Research project will engage community economic development and social economy actors in Manitoba in identifying policy priorities that will support the sector in building stronger communities and will identify various effective strategies and models of policy advancement. The project will include a scan of existing policy and programs in Manitoba as well as a comparative analysis with the policy context in Quebec, this later component completed in partnership with the National Social Economy Research Hub. The research will also consider various effective models of policy advancement in order to design more effective policy implementation strategies.
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