School may be out for summer, but it’s never too early to start thinking about picking up the books again in September.
If you’re shopping around for post-secondary programs or want to upgrade your skills, consider a degree in a CED-focused field. The community development sector offers diverse and meaningful employment opportunities (for proof, visit our National Jobs page), and Manitoba is home to some of the country’s best programs in community development/community economic development.
There has been much political interest in the role of the social economy, or third sector, in providing jobs and supporting vulnerable people into the workforce.
Although social economy organisations (SEOs) make a significant contribution to employment, jobs in the social economy are often precarious and low paid. Many SEOs, particularly those employing vulnerable people, operated in sectors where pay was low, and competition with private sector organisations was pushing them to reduce costs. Organisations found job security, career progression and adequate pay hard to deliver.
This report is based on international research produced for the OECD. It studied 655 SEOs across 8 countries, looking at their contribution to job creation, quality of employment, and role in working with vulnerable groups. The term ‘social economy’ is not widely used in the UK, but is broadly comparable with the third sector and includes social enterprises, co-operatives and associations. Organisations included those working in sectors such as social assistance, education, work integration, culture and recreation.
Governments play a pivotal role in financing many of these organisations, and therefore affecting conditions and services. Drawing upon data from the survey and our wider knowledge of employment in the social economy, we outline how policy makers might enhance the role of the social economy in providing quality employment for disadvantaged workers.
Social clauses can help ensure that social as well as economic value is taken into account when commissioning, but the cost of creating this additional social value must be considered. Social clauses must be coupled with a commitment to meet the full cost of fulfilling contracts.
The Ontario government is launching the country’s first microloan fund to help social enterprises — businesses that have a positive social, cultural, or environmental impact while generating revenue — create more jobs and strengthen local communities.
The province has partnered with the Centre for Social Innovation, TD Bank Group, Microsoft Canada, CCEDNet members Alterna Savings and Social Capital Partners along with KPMG to launch the Ontario Catapult Microloan Fund. Under the fund, social enterprises that help solve a social, environmental, cultural or economic problem, such as youth unemployment, may qualify for a loan of $5,000 to $25,000 and support services like mentorship.
Ontario is also launching a new Office for Social Enterprise led by Special Advisor Helen Burstyn. The office will promote social entrepreneurship across Ontario, partnering with the private, not-for-profit and public sectors to coordinate and expand the tools available to social entrepreneurs.
Providing the right climate to attract investment, create jobs and grow the economy is part of the new Ontario government’s plan to build a prosperous and fair province for all.
Quick Facts
The Ontario Catapult Microloan Fund is open to Ontario-based social enterprises and will begin accepting applications in June. It will be managed by the Centre for Social Innovation.
An example of a social enterprise is Toronto’s Evergreen Brick Works, which uses revenue generated through paid activities, donations, event rentals, and even onsite parking meters, to deliver accessible and inclusive community programs that bring nature back to cities — improving the environment and promoting health and wellness.
Ontario’s 2013 Budget introduced the government’s Youth Jobs Strategy to help more young people find jobs or start their own businesses, while helping employers find the skilled workers they need to thrive in the global economy.
The government is holding consultations on the Youth Jobs Strategy across the province throughout May and June.
On 6-8 May, UNRISD held a major international conference on Potential and Limits of Social and Solidarity Economy, co-hosted with the ILO and in partnership with UN–NGLS, Hivos, the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation and the Ville de Genève. The conference was a great success in terms of both participation and outcomes.
The opening session included political and academic figures. Paul Singer (National Secretary of Solidarity Economy in Brazil), Guy Ryder (Director-General of the ILO) and Sarah Cook (Director of UNRISD) opened the Conference to a full house in the ILO’s Governing Body room. José-Luis Coraggio from the Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento gave the keynote address. (See the agenda for more information on the sessions.)
Some 300 people attended the conference, representing a rich mixture of academics, UN policy makers, practitioners and civil society organizations. They made good use of the opportunity the conference presented to exchange views and knowledge taken from their different perspectives in the presentations, Poster Session for PhD students and Practitioners’ Forum.
Concrete results of these exchanges are already beginning to materialize.
Participants in the UNRISD conference, where the need to establish intergovernmental forums on SSE was discussed, have been directly involved in building the connection between the ASEAN Leadership Forum and RIPESS. The intergovernmental ASEAN Leadership Forum, taking place in conjunction with the 5th International Meeting of RIPESS, the Intercontinental Network for the Promotion of the Social Solidarity Economy, in Manila, Philippines in October 2013. This will bring members of ASEAN governments into direct contact with SSE representatives and practitioners.
An initiative is under way to establish an Interagency Task Force on SSE within the United Nations. The ILO is taking the lead in bringing relevant UN agencies together for regular exchanges on their programming and policy making in the field of SSE. It will focus UN efforts related to SSE and raise the profile of the social and solidarity economy in the UN system.
Social and solidarity economy has arguably been under the intergovernmental radar, but through initiatives like the UNRISD conference this situation is changing. The first steps have been taken—the challenge now is to use the momentum generated and carry the process forward.
View the Video Newsreel of the SSE conference.
Practitioners’ Forum Fourteen practitioners of social and solidarity economy presented their work in this forum and engaged in lively exchange with other participants. Practitioners included social enterprises and networks of social enterprises, alternative finance groups, an Internet platform, a think tank and a social entrepreneur. Minuto Cash involved visitors in their Minuto Game, a hands-on introduction to the use of an alternative currency.
PhD Poster Session PhD students working on issues relating to social and solidarity economy presented their work in the poster session and responded to the questions and comments of participants. Maria Granados from the University of Westminster in London recieved the most votes for “best poster” for hers, titled Developing Knowledge Management Capabilities in Social Enterprises. Thirteen students from as many universities participated. There were case studies from Bolivia, China, India, Italy, Tanzania and the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
Book Presentations Presenters included Hagen Henrÿ, who presented Guidelines for Cooperative Legislation; Claudia Sanchez Bajo, who presented Capital and the Death Trap; Bina Agarwal, who presented Gender and Green Governance; and José Luis Coraggio, who presented Dictionnaire de l’Autre Economie.
Special Session on Alternative Finance and Complementary Currencies This special session, organized by the United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service (UN-NGLS), examined the potential and limits of a range of innovative financial and monetary tools—especially community banks and complementary currencies—to scale up SSE initiatives and build more resilient, socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable territorial development strategies. It provided an opportunity to better understand the diversity and complementarity of these emerging instruments, which are still little known and understood in mainstream academic and development policy circles.
Trade Unions and Worker Cooperatives: Where Are We At? This seminar, held by the ILO on 9 May, brought together researchers and practitioners from around the world to talk about some of the issues and experiences that cooperatives are facing today. Participants heard presentations from Argentina, Brazil, Canada (Quebec), India, Italy, Africa and the Mercosur region, and discussed ways of strengthening relations between trade unions and cooperatives. The seminar was organized by the ILO’s Bureau for Workers’ Activities and the ILO’s Cooperative Branch.
Resources
Conference Papers and Presentations The speeches, presentations and 42 draft papers from the conference, including those from the NGLS Special Session, are available online. The conference booklet, with all details and abstracts, is also available. Podcasts of all sessions are coming soon.
Think Pieces on Social and Solidarity Economy This series of think pieces by scholars and practitioners working on a broad range of issues within the field of SSE is one of several activities in the UNRISD inquiry on “Potential and Limits of Social and Solidarity Economy”. These contributions present in a succinct manner a variety of perspectives, including the nature and impacts of different organizational forms; and the prospects for realizing the potential of SSE in different institutional and political contexts.
As the international community attempts to tackle a complex set of twenty-first century development challenges, attention has focused on the possibilities of more integrated models of development. Both the concept of sustainable development (centred on economic growth, and social and environmental protection) and the classic model of “embedded liberalism” are found wanting from the perspective of integrative development. In this think piece, Utting argues that, in today’s world, five key dimensions need to be addressed simultaneously: economic development, social protection, environmental protection, gender equality and sociopolitical empowerment. The field of Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) seems to have considerable potential in this regard. Can that potential be realized?
What Is Social and Solidarity Economy and Why Does It Matter? Governments and international organizations need to be paying far more attention to SSE, and question how its developmental and emancipatory potential can be realized. They should also be asking themselves whether current priorities or biases in development policies are not missing, or indeed undermining, what could be a major new game in town.
A guest contribution by Peter Utting, Deputy Director, to the “From Poverty To Power” blog by Duncan Green, strategic advisor for Oxfam. It was also published on the World Bank’s blog, “People, Spaces, Deliberation“.
All publications downloadable from the UNRISD website are free!
What are the benefits of community economic development and how can it become more mainstream?
Localise West Midlands (UK) has been researching how localised and community economic development can be integrated into the mainstream to help create more successful, socially just and diverse places.
Its first stage was a review of the literature evidence for the benefits of localised economies in comparison to more centralised economic approaches. There’s nothing new about localised economic approaches or writing around their social benefits, so the authors assumed this stage would be a quick overview of relevant existing analysis as context for the primary work on ‘mainstreaming’. In fact, they found little direct assessment of different economic approaches, with this review being one of the first to collate evidence around the socio-economic benefits of economic localisation strategies.
Whilst there were numerous gaps in the research, the review identified significant evidence that local economies with higher levels of small businesses and local ownership perform better in terms of economic success, job creation (especially in disadvantaged and peripheral areas), local multiplier effect, social inclusion, income redistribution, health, wellbeing, civic engagement, local distinctiveness and cultural diversity than those more dependent on centralised economic actors. This in itself was one of the strongest outcomes of the research, providing an evidence base for the rebalancing towards indigenous activity that many have called for, and a basis for further research exploration.
These findings signal the need to revalue how we balance and integrate more community-based approaches to economic development with the more dominant experience of attracting inward investment in economic development practice and policymaking. Through the research we have identified actions and approaches locally and nationally that could progress this balance.
A Mainstreaming-CED approach involves developing a mindset that thinks of the local economy as a complex ecosystem in that it takes a ‘supply and demand chain’ approach rather than focusing on individual businesses or sectors. In an ecosystem, removal of a link in the food chain upsets the whole system; likewise regeneration and economic development decisions need to be assessed for their impacts on existing supply networks.
The CED approach mindset also seeks to build a relationship-based economy, focuses economic development on partnerships and networking, understands the strategic importance of the multiplicity of the small scale, seeks to maximise local power rather than handing it to absentee landlords with little interest in or understanding of the local area, and takes a long-term perspective, with clear aims to support greater social and economic inclusion.
The Honourable Christian Paradis, Minister of Industry, announced in April that the Government of Canada has completed the transfer of responsibility for co-operatives to Industry Canada from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, which was a key recommendation in the report of the Special Committee on Co-operatives published last year.
“Co-operatives play an important economic role in generating jobs and growth in Canada,” said Minister Paradis. “Responsibility for this sector is well aligned with Industry Canada’s mandate to help make Canada more productive and competitive and improve Canada’s economic and social well-being.”
Work on co-operatives will continue at Industry Canada with a number of initiatives, including:
assessing Industry Canada programs and services that are relevant to and accessible by co-operatives;
advancing a cross-government network with other federal departments that have responsibility for co-operatives;
developing an engagement strategy with provincial counterparts to build working relationships and increase understanding of the co-operative business model; and
releasing Co-operatives in Canada in 2009, a report on the activities of co-operatives across the country.
Canada has over 9,000 co-operatives and credit unions with more than 18 million members. Canada’s co-operatives employ approximately 156,000 people and own total assets of approximately $266 billion. Industry Canada is responsible for developing federal legislation for the incorporation of federal bodies other than financial institutions. The Department was already responsible for the Canada Cooperatives Act. Corporations Canada, which is part of Industry Canada, administers the Act and the incorporation of federal co-operatives.
“This change will ensure that there is a single focal point in government to facilitate development, innovation and growth in Canada’s co-operative sector,” added Minister Paradis. “Our Government welcomes the opportunity to engage with co-operatives and to further review our business programming to support co-operatives.”
Is there enough for all? The Calgary Poverty Reduction Initiative (CPRI) believes that there is. In a prosperous and growing city like Calgary, this report asserts that together, Calgarians have the resources to build a resilient community. Those resources are not only financial, but also come in the form of infrastructure, relationships, values and skills—all sites of existing investments.
Yet, despite the abundance in Calgary, many Calgarians also suffer from significant personal and financial distress. Rapid economic and population growth has brought stressors. For many, costs have risen faster than incomes, while infrastructure strains under the demands of growth. Meanwhile, the shared values and sense of community that have sustained the city in the past has been challenged in recent years.
In 2012, CPRI engaged in extensive public consultations involving community members and persons experiencing poverty, along with stakeholders in government, business, the non-profit sector and academia. Through this process a suite of mutually supportive strategic actions has been developed. These actions address the vulnerabilities that lie at the root of poverty through key policy initiatives, strategic program investments, and service enhancements or procedural changes.This strategy is based on the philosophy that there is enough for all, reflecting a belief the city already has the assets needed to thrive. To the extent possible, this strategy therefore aims to redirect resources rather than seek new ones, to build on existing initiatives, and integrate these into existing structures and operations.
Contents
1. My Neighbour’s Strength is My Strength 2. The Roots of Poverty 3. Vision, Mission, Goals and Outcomes 4. Priorities for Action 4.1 All Calgary Communities are strong, supportive and inclusive 4.2 Everyone in Calgary has the income and assets needed to thrive 4.3 Everyone in Calgary can easily access the right supports, services and resources 4.4 All Aboriginal peoples are equal participants in Calgary’s prosperous future 5. What’s Different About this Strategy? 6. Governance and Implementation
Human Resources and Skills Development Canada has released its report Harnessing the Power of Social Finance in response to the national call for concepts it undertook in late 2012. This call for concepts challenged Canadians to propose solutions to complex social issues that are funded through social finance instruments.
The Canadian CED Network worked with several partners to ensure that effective and proven CED, cooperative, and social enterprise investment approaches were among the responses. Notably, CCEDNet submitted a proposal to develop Community Economic Development Investment Funds (CEDIFs) across the country. CEDIFs raise capital from the community to invest in local enterprises which produce a social benefit. Citizens collectively identify social and economic challenges within their community and decide where to invest capital raised through the CEDIF to address those challenges. The Canadian Co-operative Association also submitted a proposal calling for the creation of a targeted co-op development initiative that would support co-ops for specific populations facing disadvantages.
The HRSDC report highlights innovative proposals from several CCEDNet members:
Ottawa Community Loan Fund (OCLF): OCLF’s Seniors’ Housing Project submitted a concept that would develop small-scale, independent community-based living units.
Toronto Enterprise Fund (TEF): TEF submitted a concept that would provide business coaching and financing to social enterprises staffed by marginalized people.
In addition, the report highlights successful social finance initiatives that are already
The objective of the meeting was to promote the discovery of approaches and practices that are part of the social and solidarity economy (SSE). For the Centre, the social and solidarity economy draws its strength from being at the heart of collective sustainable development practices that contribute to building a more just and equitable world.
French is the 4th most spoken language in the Americas, respectively after Spanish, English and Portuguese. For a minority group in the Americas, it turns out that the SSE can be an indispensable tool in many communities.
In addition to representatives of Quebec and Canada, there were participants from Louisiana, Guadeloupe and Haiti.
The idea of setting up a network for the exchange of information on the ESS in the Francophonie of the Americas is seen by participants as very relevant.
The Chantier de l’économie sociale and the Canadian Community Economic Development Network (CCEDNet), members of RIPESS North America, were partners of the Centre for the meeting.
Newly launched GROUNDSWELL is an eight-month-long Vancouver-based training institute designed to assist people under the age of 35 in developing the hard and soft skills to build their own sustainable enterprises, including but not limited to co-ops, self-employment, social businesses, collectives, non-profits and other grassroots economic configurations that can contribute significantly to an emerging social and solidarity economy.
The project is set to open with 25 participants in September, and they have begun accepting applications.
If you are ready to put your best ideas into action: to build and contribute to sustainable, impactful projects and enterprises, check them out.
On April 26, Global Winnipeg aired a video on CCEDNet member BUILD (Building Urban Industries for Local Development), featuring commentary by CCEDNet’s regional director Brendan Reimer. Using the personal narrative of ex-gang member Jesse Ducharme, Katie Chamberlain explores how BUILD helps people integrate into their local economies, which helps themselves, their families, and their communities. This holistic approach to economic and personal development is at the heart of many social enterprises.
School may be out for summer, but it’s never too early to start thinking about picking up the books again in September. 
Ontario is also launching a new Office for Social Enterprise led by Special Advisor Helen Burstyn. The office will promote social entrepreneurship across Ontario, partnering with the private, not-for-profit and public sectors to coordinate and expand the tools available to social entrepreneurs. /07BD80D1197635D2C1257B6E0056F24B/$file/plenary-SSE-in%20text.jpg)
Fourteen practitioners of social and solidarity economy presented their work in this forum and engaged in lively exchange with other participants. Practitioners included social enterprises and networks of social enterprises, alternative finance groups, an Internet platform, a think tank and a social entrepreneur. Minuto Cash involved visitors in their Minuto Game, a hands-on introduction to the use of an alternative currency.
PhD students working on issues relating to social and solidarity economy presented their work in the poster session and responded to the questions and comments of participants. Maria Granados from the University of Westminster in London recieved the most votes for “best poster” for hers, titled Developing Knowledge Management Capabilities in Social Enterprises. Thirteen students from as many universities participated. There were case studies from Bolivia, China, India, Italy, Tanzania and the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
Presenters included Hagen Henrÿ, who presented Guidelines for Cooperative Legislation; Claudia Sanchez Bajo, who presented Capital and the Death Trap; Bina Agarwal, who presented Gender and Green Governance; and José Luis Coraggio, who presented Dictionnaire de l’Autre Economie.
This 
The Honourable Christian Paradis, Minister of Industry, announced in April that the Government of Canada has completed the transfer of responsibility for co-operatives to Industry Canada from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, which was a key recommendation in the report of the Special Committee on Co-operatives published last year.
The 
The objective of the meeting was to promote the discovery of approaches and practices that are part of the social and solidarity economy (SSE). For the Centre, the social and solidarity economy draws its strength from being at the heart of collective sustainable development practices that contribute to building a more just and equitable world.
French is the 4th most spoken language in the Americas, respectively after Spanish, English and Portuguese. For a minority group in the Americas, it turns out that the SSE can be an indispensable tool in many communities.
Newly launched GROUNDSWELL is an eight-month-long Vancouver-based training institute designed to assist people under the age of 35 in developing the hard and soft skills to build their own sustainable enterprises, including but not limited to co-ops, self-employment, social businesses, collectives, non-profits and other grassroots economic configurations that can contribute significantly to an emerging social and solidarity economy.