"Social enterprises are business-charity hybrids. They aim to do well in the marketplace in order to do good in the community.
"The concept is not new. Long before anyone was theorizing about it, Maritimers were doing it. Dairy farmers built co-op creameries to cut their costs and stabilize their communities. Fruit growers organized co-operatives to break the grip of exploitative middlemen. Townsfolk pooled their earnings to set up co-op stores. These grassroots initiatives were one of the best anti-poverty programs ever conceived.
"In the 1920s, a group of visionary priests at St. Francis Xavier University added adult education to the mix, travelling from village to village teaching people crop management and literacy. Over the next 30 years, the Antigonish movement spread from Nova Scotia to New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, then moved westward, incorporating the ideas of Quebec’s caisses populaires. In the ’60s, it petered out.
"Today’s social enterprise movement is a digital, secular, urban renaissance of that tradition.
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"Now, unlike then, there is no crusader like Father Moses Coady of the Antigonish movement to spread the message and cut through “the pessimism that has so benumbed everyone that nothing has been attempted to break the spell.”
"His modern-day heirs might have the right formula. But they need an articulate leader who can explain social entrepreneurship to Canadians and give them a stake in its success."
Full article: Toronto incubates new brand of business-charity hybrids.
