Over the last 30 years, international development agencies have gradually abandoned the top-down approach to economic development that recipients have long criticized as paternalistic, inefficient, and insensitive to local realities. Increasingly, these agencies couch their work as “community-based ”, “community-led ”, “community-driven ”, or “locally-led” development. Rarely, however, do these development efforts structurally embed community voice in the form of a democratic voting mechanism. As member-owned and democratically controlled organizations serving the community’s mutual needs and aspirations, co-operatives by contrast have long understood the benefits of hard-wiring local voices into economic development. Please join us on November 2 as Qian Wan, the Co-operative Development Specialist at CDF Canada and a PhD student at the University of Saskatchewan, introduces the concept of the Integrated Co-operative Approach CDF Canada uses in its international development work.
About our speaker
Qian Wan is Cooperative Development Specialist at CDF Canada. He supports the design and implementation of projects to use the cooperative model as a vehicle for local economic development and social resilience. Mr. Wan has experience designing cooperative development strategies to facilitate technology adoption, access to financial services, agricultural value chain, women empowerment, climate-smart agriculture, childcare service provision, etc. He also provides technical support to the program team regarding cooperative governance, cooperative assessment, cooperative start-up, etc.
Event Details
- When:
- Time:
- 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM CST
- Location:
- Join us on Zoom! Please register and the connection details will be sent by email.
- File:
- Event Communique