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This seminar was live from the 2004 National CED Conference "Communities
Creating the World We Want" in Trois-Rivières,
Québec and highlighted the key issues facing the CED
landscape in Canada.
The Conference brought together nearly 600
community leaders from across the country and Paul Born was
able to interview some of those key leaders who provided updates
on the current CED landscape.
Interviewees included Caroline
Lachance, ÉCOF Co-Director (ÉCOF is the
local organizer for the conference and a member of the Vibrant
Communities initiative), Mark Cabaj, and
Rupert Downing, Executive Director of the
Canadian CED Network.
 Caroline
Lachance - Caroline sits on the Board of Directors
of the Canadian CED Network and is a director at Économie
communautaire de Francheville (ÉCOF) in Trois-Rivières.
ÉCOF was set up in 1996 as the first CED resource in
the Mauricie region. For more on ÉCOF's work, see the
paper ÉCOF-
CDÉC de Trois-Rivières: A Case Study or
visit their website at http://www.ecof.qc.ca/.
Mark Cabaj - Mark
is a Principal at Tamarack, working as the Director of Community
Engagement and the project lead for the Vibrant Communities
initiative.
Mark first cut his teeth on community building
working in human services with Human Resources Development
Canada and Aboriginal groups in rural Alberta. In the early
1990s, he served as the Foreign Assistance Coordinator for
Grants in Poland's Ministry of Privatization and Mission Coordinator
for the United Nations Development Programme's first regional
economic development initiative in Eastern Europe.
Back in Canada, Mark completed graduate work
in urban and regional planning at the University of Waterloo
with a focus on evaluating the work of Community Economic
Development organizations. From 1997-2001, he was a Principal
of Waterloo Region's Opportunities 2000 project - an initiative
that won Provincial, National and International awards for
its multisectoral approach to reducing poverty. Mark briefly
served as the Executive Director of the Canadian Community
Economic Development Network (CCEDNet) before joining Tamarack.
He is the head of the Professional Development Committee of
CCEDNet and is also a member of the making waves magazine
advisory council.
Read Mark's article: CED
& Social Economy in Canada - A People's History.
 Rupert
Downing - Rupert is Executive Director of the Canadian
CED Network, a national member-based NGO committed to
supporting sustainable community economic development. The
network has offices in Quebec and BC, staff in Manitoba, Ontario
and Nova Scotia, and supports the work of several hundred
community based development organizations in every region
of Canada.
Prior to joining the Network, he was Executive
Director of the BC Ministry of Community Development, and
managed the Ministry's programs to support and invest in community
led efforts to diversify local economies and enhance the social,
economic and environmental sustainability of BC's communities.
He Co-Chaired Federal Provincial Territorial Working Groups
on Community Development and Learning, and developed federal
provincial initiatives with First Nations, coastal, rural
and urban disadvantaged communities.
Rupert previously worked for the BC government
on social and economic policy initiatives for seven years,
and was Executive Director of the Social Planning and Research
Council of BC (SPARC) prior to joining government. He is currently
chairing the Pacific Foundation for Community Learning that
is researching lifelong learning strategies for communities
needing to reinvent themselves in the face of major economic
change, and is Community Learning Program Director with Simon
Fraser University’s Centre for Distance Learning.
For more on the Canadian CED Network, please
visit their website at http://www.ccednet-rcdec.ca/.
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