Today, with great excitement, we officially launched the Manitoba Social Enterprise Strategy: A Strategy for Creating Jobs Through Social Enterprise. A community-led initiative co-created by the Canadian CED Network – Manitoba and the Province of Manitoba, this document is a comprehensive collection of concrete policy and program recommendations to support non-profits creating jobs and training opportunities for people with barriers to employment.

Social enterprises are non-profit organizations that use a business model to realize social, cultural and environmental outcomes, such as fostering a more sustainable environment, providing important community services like child care, generating revenue for non-profits, or as this strategy is focused on, creating jobs and training opportunities for people with barriers to employment.

By connecting multi-barriered individuals to a comprehensive program of social supports and job training, social enterprises have proved effective at providing a sustainable pathway toward prosperity, while reducing poverty and crime, growing our labour market, increasing our tax base and decreasing the costs associated with health care, justice and social services.

The road to today’s launch began in the fall of 2013, when CCEDNet – Manitoba members passed a policy resolution calling on the Province of Manitoba to co-create and co-produce a sector strategy for social enterprises focused on creating training and job opportunities for people with barriers to employment. The Province responded in Budget 2014 with a commitment to support the development of a sector strategy, and shortly after a steering committee was struck, comprised of half community members and half government representatives.

Download the Manitoba Social Enterprise Strategy

Over the past eight months, CCEDNet – Manitoba has conducted broad research on best-practice, completed a Provincial program review, hosted consultations with social enterprise stakeholders in Manitoba, received expert advice from British Columbia to Scotland, and repeatedly took progressing drafts of the document to the community for feedback. The result is a thorough list of policy and program recommendations, finely tuned to the strengths and opportunities of the Manitoba social enterprise sector.

Increasing the amount or scale of social enterprise alone is not a panacea for our complex community challenges. The incidence of poverty and unemployment in our province is an issue that needs dedicated and ongoing action that includes but is by no means limited to growing social enterprises — without continued investments in our communities in areas such as affordable housing and child care, the potential for social enterprise will not be realized.

However, it is our sincere belief that by implementing the recommendations within the MSES, we will see more supportive jobs created and more pathways out of poverty realized. Communities in Manitoba have identified this approach as one way they can succeed, and this is one way that we can support community-led and -owned opportunities.

Today is a day to celebrate; tomorrow we get back to work. We look forward to partnering with stakeholders from various sectors across the province to implement the recommendations within this strategy, and look to the Province to signal its commitment to the strategy through investments within Budget 2015.

Together, we can ensure that more Manitobans who want to work have access to the training and employment opportunities they need, and a pathway can be forged to break the vicious poverty cycle too many of our community-members face.

The video below introduces one of Manitoba’s successful social enterprises, BUILD, a member of the Canadian CED Network. More examples can be found among our Profiles of CED in Manitoba.

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Darcy Penner is a Research & Policy Advisor with the Canadian CED Network. He has been working in community development through various capacities since graduating from the University of Winnipeg with a BA (Honours) in Politics.

Darcy was also a contributing author to the Alternative Municipal Budget for CCEDNet-Manitoba.

Proposals are now being accepted to host the 2016 National CCEDNet Conference!  Any CCEDNet members and partners interested in hosting the 2016 conference are invited to submit a proposal. 

Host selection criteria

1. Capacity to organise a major bilingual national event
2. Local mobilization potential
3. Resources that can be leveraged for the event

Information required in the proposal

1. Proposed conference title and theme(s)
2. Reasons for interest
3. Demonstrate your experience and capacity to organize a major bilingual event
4. Positive impacts for the community and region
5. Local partners/mobilization strategy
6. Resources committed or anticipated, including in-kind organizing capacity by hosts and partners, as well as cash contributions by conference sponsors and funders
7. Local initiatives/innovations to showcase
8. Recommended venues able to accommodate up to 400 participants and 12 breakout sessions.

A supplementary document with background information on previous conferences and typical responsibilities of CCEDNet and host partners is available upon request by emailing

Completed proposals must be sent by February 28, 2015 to 

The successful host for the 2016 event will be announced in spring 2015.

If you have any questions feel free to contact Michael Toye at mtoye at ccednet-rcdec.ca

Our current story is about Sacred Money and Markets. Money, it tells us, is the measure of all worth and the source of all happiness. The market is omniscient. Earth is simply a source of raw materials. Inequality and environmental destruction are unfortunate but unavoidable. Although many recognize this story promotes bad ethics, bad science, and bad economics, it will remain our guiding story until replaced by a more compelling story that aligns with our deepest understanding of the universe and our relationship to it.

A Sacred Life and Living Earth story is grounded in a cosmology that affirms we are living beings born of a living Earth itself born of a living universe. Our health and well-being depend on an economy that works in co-productive partnership with the processes by which Earth’s community of life maintains the conditions of its own existence—and ours. Offering a hopeful vision, this book lays out the transformative impact adopting this story will have on every aspect of human life and society.

Release Date: February 2, 2015

Order the book

David C. Korten is a cofounder and board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, founder and president of the Living Economies Forum, a member of the Club of Rome, a founding board member emeritus of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, a former Associate of the International Forum on Globalization, and a former Harvard Business School professor.

Watch the book launch at All Saints Church in Pasadena, Jan 25, 2015

Affordable housing has long been a community priority. Individuals and families need stable housing to access social services and succeed in training or employment. The province has added more than 3,000 new social and affordable-housing units since 2009, and has increased annual investments in repairs and maintenance tenfold in the last decade. While these investments have helped meet some of the need, more social housing — particularly larger family units with more than three bedrooms — is required.

This is a key recommendation found in The View from Here 2015: Manitobans Call for a Renewed Poverty Reduction Plan being released today in Winnipeg. To address persistent poverty in this province, community groups have outlined this plan, which utilizes the work of on-the-ground experts and recent research. The findings are supported by over 90 organizations across the province. It builds on earlier recommendations we put forward in 2009.

Given the ever-increasing costs of rent and inadequate welfare rates, in 2009 we recommended increasing the shelter allowance for those on employment and income assistance (EIA). The province responded in 2014 with a new income benefit to be phased in over four years, which provides people on EIA and the working poor with more help to pay their rent. Community groups are calling for this new benefit to be implemented immediately.

In 2009, we recommended increases to the minimum wage. Although the province has continued with regular increases, stronger action is needed — a job should help lift people out of poverty and not perpetuate it. Currently two-parent families with two children who are working full time at minimum wage live below the poverty line. The province is integrating training and hiring for marginalized populations into public infrastructure projects. It is also working with the community on a strategy to grow social enterprises. These non-profit businesses successfully train, hire and support people shut out of the workforce because of issues like a criminal record, a disability, or lack of formal education. A financial commitment is needed to implement this new social-enterprise strategy and bring more low-income Manitobans into the labour market.

Poverty reduction cannot just be about jobs and better wages. We need investment in public services such as health care, early learning and childcare. While the province has made great progress on creating childcare spaces, the existing supply is not meeting demand.

People also need community-led services that address complex challenges such as addictions, mental illness and low literacy levels. The province provides multi-year funding to organizations that deliver these social services in the communities where low-income people live. This support should be expanded to more organizations providing effective wrap-around services.

Many are disappointed Manitoba’s poverty rates are still too high, but statistics do not immediately respond to changes in government policy. Manitobans who work with individuals and families in poverty witness incremental effects daily and are confident we are on the right path.

They know many Manitobans would be worse off had investments in recent years not been made and that even bolder action is needed if we are going to see more significant improvements. We need the province to build on investments that are making a difference.

Today’s release of The View From Here 2015 provides a renewed package of comprehensive actions for reducing poverty.

The report is based on research and consultations with individuals and organizations who know what works. This comprehensive approach will help reduce increasing costs in health care, justice, social assistance and child-welfare systems as poverty is inextricably linked to these systems. Community groups hope this plan will provide a renewed foundation for future government action to reduce poverty in Manitoba.

Download the report

Originally published in the Winnipeg Free Press on January 30, 2015

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Kirsten Bernas is Research and Policy Manager with CCEDNet in Manitoba. She received a BA (Honours) in Economics from the University of Manitoba as well as an MA from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa. Kirsten represents CCEDNet on the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives‘ Alternative Federal Budget Steering Committee, Make Poverty History Canada’s Steering Committee, and the Right to Housing Coalition‘s Provincial Committee.