From the event website:

From CHF Canada:

In this new video, CHF Canada’s Program Manager, Membership & Events, Cynthia Mitchell, and a few co-op members share some of the many reasons we’re looking forward to our upcoming Virtual Annual Meeting. What are you most looking forward to?
Register now!

You’ll find all you need on our event website at www.chfcanada.coop/coopfutures2021

• Check out the schedule
• Browse the exciting selection of live and pre-recorded workshops and panel sessions
• Find out how this year’s virtual conference is an affordable and convenient way for even more of your co-op’s members and staff to participate
• Find out about the great fun, social and networking events and activities we have planned, including a co-op film night, AGM bingo and prizes
• Register!

We look forward to seeing you in June!

Indigenous and Ecological Economics are rooted in the similar values – relationships and interconnections with ecosystems. As society grapples with a growing climate crisis and faltering economies Indigneous peoples across the globe are proposing a return to the sacred, a return to relationships with each other and the lands. At this gathering we will dive into discussions, workshops, panels and presentations led by Indigenous leaders, practitioners and scholars to redefine ecological economics from an Indigenous perspective. By empowering our communities to reclaim our economic systems built on millenia of knowledge and practice we can help craft the needs and direction of what new Indigenous-led climate policies and economic paradigms call look like. The gathering will involve:

• Indigenous and participant-led discussions in breakout sessions,
• Indigenous ceremony and workshops,
• “problem labs” to articulate Indigenous views on “ecological economics”,
• Indigenous keynote speakers and experts, and
• safe spaces for Indigenous peoples to discuss, strategize and reclaim our relationships with each other and our lands and territories.

Why an Indigenous gathering on “Ecological Economics”?

Ecological Economics is the study of relationships and interactions between economies and the ecosystems that support them. It brings together research in economics, ecology and other social and natural sciences that aim to understand how environmental sustainability and economic abundance can emerge together. Ecological economics is a relatively new discipline, and increasingly, researchers in this field are turning towards Indigenous Peoples’ traditional knowledge.

In 2019, Indigenous Climate Action’s Executive Director, Eriel Deranger, was invited by CANSEE to offer reflections as a keynote at their “Engaging Economies of Change” Conference. The conference was filled with hopeful discussion, workshops and presentations on ecological economics but lacked strong participation and leadership from Indigenous peoples. Deranger found this troubling as many of the presenters were taking from Indigenous knowledge systems and repackaging what Indigenous Peoples have been doing for thousands of years as a new discipline. Deranger challenged CANSEE to take a new approach and re-centre Indigenous voice, leadership and peoples in ecological economic and the discourse leading the way. CANSEE rose to the challenge to partner with ICA. The result is this event – engaging Indigenous scholars and leaders, more broadly, in an Indigenous-led space to discuss the concept of ecological economics from the perspectives of Indigenous Peoples.

From their website:

For over a year now, we have been living through an unprecedented global health crisis. We have seen our daily habits and lives changed, not to say, even turned upside down. Through this crisis, co-operatives and mutuals have shown their resilience and strength. With this year’s congress theme, “Towards a more co-operative economy”, we aim to discuss how the co-operative and mutualist model could contribute to the rebuilding of the Canadian economy.

From June 14 to 17, 2021, you are invited to participate in our Virtual National Congress to discuss the following points:

• The role of the sector in the Canadian economy;
• The impact of private business conversions to co-operatives;
• The importance of diversity and inclusion in the co-operative and mutual sector;
• The place of young leaders in within the co-operative sector.
• These will lead us to provide solutions for creating a more co-operative economy.

At this year’s national virtual congress we will have:

• Five 90-minute panel discussions spread over four days;
• An online networking session where participants will have the opportunity to have informal discussions and meet-and-greet sessions.

A virtual conference hosted by the International Centre for Co-operative Management, June 17-19, 2021

This International Co-operative Governance Symposium is an interactive and participatory gathering of governance professionals, experts, and researchers from various countries. This is not a large, “talking head” style conference as most attendees will be direct contributors to at least one of the sessions during the Symposium. You will engage deeply throughout and during plenary, breakout sessions, collaborative workshop-style sessions, and socializing opportunities.

Consider these few days as an opportunity to think deeply about governance characteristics, structures, and process that are fit for co-operatives. Learn from each other about new and different frameworks that focus on the people-centred, democratic, and jointly-owned nature of co-operatives with the objective of maintaining and enhancing co-operative health.

About your hosts

We hosted a symposium on governance in 2013 and since have been engaged in various reports and initiatives, including an ICA report on Co-operative Governance Fit to Build Resilience in the Face of Complexity. Presently, ICCM is collaborating on an international research initiative through 2022 on co-operative governance with colleagues at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven) with the funding support from FWO Belgium (SBO project S006019N).

Call for Papers

Governance Symposium call for papers.

From the newsletter:

Join us next month for NASCO’s Staff & Member Leadership Convening, which will be held remotely on June 21- 27, 2021. The conference will offer programming for staff, managers, board directors, and member leadership of group equity housing cooperatives and campus-based housing cooperatives.

We are offering sliding-scale registration per session, so you can send multiple individuals at your co-op to different sessions based on their roles and interests.

Coffee Socials 
Each morning, we will start the day with a coffee social where you can join topic-based breakout rooms. Join any morning during the conference to network with your peers. These socials are free for anyone to attend.

Workshops and Knowledge-Shares
We have a great line-up of workshops and knowledge-shares including topics such as Meeting Facilitation, Conflict Support Tools, COVID Recovery, Co-op Member Roles & Responsibilities, Planning for Turnover, and more. Learn best practices, share your experience, and brainstorm new strategies with co-op peers.

Discussions
We have several guided discussion sessions, including discussions based on staff and member roles where you can have dedicated space to connect with peers who share your responsibilities. Other discussions include Canadian Co-op Discussion, Affordability and Defining it for your Co-op, Cooperatives as a Business and as a Safety Net, and more.

Where co-op educators convene! Don’t miss it!

This workshop aims to present and discuss new possibilities for business models and financing schemes brought by artificial intelligence (AI). AI can be understood in a simplified way as a system which learns from data and generates insights and recommendations at a scale and speed sometimes far exceeding human levels. Among these capabilities are speech and image recognition, natural language processing or pattern detection.

The workshop will be moderated by Wolfgang Spiess-Knafl, who will give an introduction to the technology, classification schemes and questions of data management. This will serve as basis to discuss the folowing two topics, which are relevant for social enterprise finance intermediaries.

Ulrich Scharf will discuss SkillLab’s use of artificial intelligence and the resulting business model. SkillLab uses AI to help people explore, capture, and express their skills. This enables employment services and education providers to better understand their clients and connect them to relevant careers and education.

Stephan A. Jansen will discuss urbanization and the city as the laboratory for social change regarding opportunities for social enterprise finance intermediaries across different fields such as mobility or health. He will also present prototypes of financing vehicles with a social impact in the Urban Health Tech Area with an inter-sectorial and inter-industrial innovation design.

The three speakers will deliver an interactive online session.

Speakers

• Ulrich Scharf is the Founder and Managing Director of Amsterdam-based award-winning SkillLab. SkillLab is a social business developing technology-based solutions to empower people to turn their skills into careers.
• Stephan A. Jansen is working at the intersection of new technologies, social patterns, finance and innovation. He is founding coordinator of the Digital Urban Center for Aging & Health (DUCAH) at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society as well as Director of the Center for Philanthropy & Civil Society (PhiCS) at Karlshochschule in Karlsruhe. He is co-CEO of the Society for Urban Mobility (BICICLI) and their mobility consultancy Mobility New Designs (MOND) in Berlin. He has worked for twenty years in scientific policy consulting in the Federal Chancellery, the Federal Ministry of Finance, and the Federal Ministry of Research, among others.
• Wolfgang Spiess-Knafl is working at the European Center for Social Finance, which delivers EaSI Technical Assistance services on behalf of the European Commission. He has an engineering background and started his career in investment banking. Wolfgang has been active in the field of social finance since 2009. His current main interests are emerging new technologies and their intersection with social and environmental objectives.

A background paper will be shared ahead of the workshop to help to structure the discussions.