What is community economic development? Many people ask the
question, but few receive a clear answer. Some receive confusing answers while
others do not wait for an answer. Still others, simply write it off as
"left wing" or "socialist" or "communist."
Really, in simple terms, community economic development
(CED) is economic development +. It is economic development, but not just that.
It is much more than that. CED encompasses all aspects of a community, just as
in reality, our lives do as well.
That being said, I find it somewhat disheartening when people
talk about CED in terms of "business development" and
"entrepreneurship" only. I believe that this narrows and limits our
thinking and opportunities for innovation. This narrow focus also takes away
from more collective solutions and encourages a strong focus on self rather
than broader community.
There are many examples of communities that have been largely bankrupted
by the classical approach to economic development. I won’t list them here, but
you can do a search on the Internet for communities who have had their economies devastated by the presence
of Walmart (or other large corporations), or by the closing of mining operations, saw mills, or the recent
collapse of the manufacturing economy in Canada.
In each of these cases, the focus was placed on attracting
large employers (corporations) to ride into the community as a hero and offer
jobs and ‘economic development’. Usually this was accomplished through incentives. In every case, the communities became
dependent upon these big businesses and failed to develop their own capacity for
economic development within the community.
There are many communities and thinkers now realizing this
and investing in research and projects that aim to develop the concepts of
economic development +. You can find some of this research at www.communityeconomies.org. In fact, there are many other websites with this research occurring as well.
However, I want to focus on the fact that many communities
and people interested in CED often miss out on some valuable resources
available to them. I will list a few of them here:
- Government of Manitoba free CED Capacity Assessment tool: http://www.gov.mb.ca/ana/interest/ced.html
- The HR Council has many resources to help non-profits develop or improve their HR situation (or at least, get pointed in the right direction): http://hrcouncil.ca/home.cfm
- Additionally, I am working with partners in the delivery of HR reviews and assessments with a tool that I built with input from many long standing HR professionals: HR Capacity Assessment. Beyond that, I also offer consulting support in the area of planning and strategies. My first suggestion, though, is to start with some of the free resources above first as these will help you define exactly what you would like from a consultant (me or otherwise).
Ken
