Building Community-Centred Economies: Lessons from Around the World

1. Building Community-Centred Economies: Lessons from Around the World Deborah Fry IACD

2. About IACD • Global network of community development practitioners and activists from over 54 countries. • Face-to-face events (annual global conferences, regional events) • Local groups • Online networking (www.iacdglobal.org)

3. 2009 Building Community-Centred Economies Conference • 2009 Conference held in June in Brisbane, Australia • Over 450 participants • Many, many stories of communities tackling these issues. • All conference papers available at: http://www.cdconference.com.au/

4. Community Economic Development • People working together to harness local resources, through which they can: • meet their needs in secure and sustainable ways; • foster the well-being of people and their environments; and • enable people to affect and shape their futures.

5. Why Community-Centred Economies? • Reduce distance between production and consumption. • Development of closer relations between producers and consumers. • Sense of responsibility for waste. • Minimise potential for exploitation. • Valuing diversity, gender and ecology. • Relationship, connectedness and meeting real needs. (Hawthorne, 2009)

6. Learning Together as We Go: Australia • Local Living Economy in Queensland • What is a Local Living Economy (LLE)? LLE is about economic power residing within local communities: • LLEs locally produce and exchange as many products & services as they practically can • LLEs support, encourage & promote local ownership of SMEs

7. Local Living Economies • LLE consumers appreciate the benefits of buying locally, creating local jobs & keeping money earned & spent in the local community • LLE businesses source products locally wherever possible • Food is an excellent entry point for LLE • They are all based on relationships between people and place

8. Southeast Queensland LLE Network • Cross-boundary and Cross-sectoral • Informal network built on personal relationships and common understandings • Logan City Council, Gold Coast City Council, Scenic Rim Regional Council • Tourism sector, Indigenous People, Not For Profit, Small Businesses, social enterprise • Aim to put LLE on the policy table as a valid approach to economic development • Aim to leverage pilot projects and existing initiatives in LLE

9. At the Individual Level—Community Theatre Freire’s critical literacy process applied to the money system • Becoming financially literate is a political act • Teachers and students are both experts • See money system as socially constructed, able to be changed • Familiar financial realities in an unfamiliar form (‘codifications’) • Analysing deep structure of codifications creates new understanding • Real dialogue, shared knowledge, is essential

10. Freire cont. • Uncover ‘generative concepts’ (concepts with emotional power and leverage to change how people see their world) • Generative concepts analysed and used to create new concepts • This leads to a new consciousness of ability to act on the world

12. Many more stories… • Workers food co-ops in Ecuador • Case Study of a Worker-Owned Homecare Co-operative in the United States • Building sustainable livelihoods through women’s empowerment in • Thriving Economies in Desert Australia: Challenges, Opportunities and Constraints Download presentations and digital story clips at: www.cdconference.com.au

13. Buzz Words • Local, Local, Local • Local food economies • Local living economy (LLE) • Local businesses • Place-based • Build on and develop community assets (you can’t have a local economy without a local community)

14. What About Scotland? • Is ‘localism’ a concept that resonates in Scotland? • What about asset-based community development? • What are the current debates around these issues? Where do you stand? • What do you think is the most important thing that needs to happen to move towards a community-centred economy in Scotland?