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We are a group of researchers from academic institutions,
community organizations and various levels of government,
who have come together to explore the Social Economy in
Atlantic Canada.
Atlantic Canadians have developed many formal and informal
organizations to meet their needs and those of their
communities. Current responses to the challenges facing the
region build on a long established tradition of innovation
and cooperative effort. As a few examples, we can think
about women’s shelters, church groups, Lion’s Clubs, local
credit unions, the YMCA/YWCA, sports leagues, community gardens,
youth leadership camps, organizations to help shut-ins,
community-owned arenas, farm supply co-ops, meals-on-wheels,
farmers’ co-ops, housing co-ops, community health clinics,
co-op book stores, non-profit foundations, charitable
societies, sports equipment exchanges, food banks,
community-shared agriculture farms, farmers’ markets, local
or regional environmental organizations and watershed groups.
The list can go on and on.
Oriented more toward social values and goals than towards
making a profit for shareholders, these successful
initiatives are an expression of a strong entrepreneurial
spirit! Whether as individual social entrepreneurs who
develop enterprises that emphasize social goals, or as
collective entrepreneurs who work together to create
collectively-owned organizations that are focused on the social and
economic betterment of people and their communities, the
people who create these organizations are definitely
entrepreneurs. They have vision, drive, willingness to take
risks, and ability to attract needed investments of time,
money, and other valuable resources. The organizations they
create have both social and economic impacts.
A term now being used to describe these many initiatives is
“Social Economy”. The three main groupings of social economy
organizations are: co-operatives (including credit unions),
non-profit societies and charities, and mutuals. These
organizations have the following characteristics in common: they are not controlled by government, they put
people before profit, they engage stakeholders in their
governance and decision making, and they are likely to rely
on volunteer labour as well as, or in addition to, paid
labour.
There are however, wide gaps in our knowledge of this
sector. The members of the Social Economy and Sustainability
Research Network (SES) are working to narrow some of these
gaps. In the process, we aim to increase the region’s
capacity for a dynamic social economy by building
partnerships, knowledge, and networks across the region and
its peoples; by orienting the research to meet the needs of
community partners (themselves part of the social economy);
and by making an impact on policy at the provincial and
municipal levels.
This site will grow and adapt as our project progresses. We
hope that you will come often to explore it. We welcome your
reflections and observations.
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