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Canadian Rural Partnership
Rural Research and Analysis 
Tools & Techniques for Community Recovery
& Renewal
Acrobat Portable Document Format (.pdf) Prepared by: Centre for Community Entreprise This information is provided free of charge to the public. It may be reused provided that it is accurately reproduced and the source is credited. Persons using this information agree to save harmless Her Majesty in right of Canada and all her representatives against any claim resulting from its use. Any policy views, whether explicitly stated, inferred or interpreted from the contents of this publication have been developed from the research by the Consultant, and should not be represented as reflecting the views of the Canadian Rural Partnership or those of member agencies or the Government of Canada. © Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, 2005 To obtain additional copies, please contact:
Rural Research and Analysis Unit
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Publication Number 59756E Également offert en français sous le titre : Outils et Techniques pour la Renaissance et le Renouvellement Communautaires, Agriculture et Agroalimentaire Canada No de publication 50518F
Preface Tools & Techniques was conceived initially as a part of the Community Resilience Manual: A Resource for Rural Recovery and Renewal which the Centre for Community Enterprise has created with the support of the Communities Committee of Forest Renewal BC (FRBC). It approached the Centre in 1998 in search of a simple, practical resource that could assist British Columbia's many economically‑distressed small towns. The idea was to create a resource that they could use to assess local circumstances efficiently and effectively, and on that basis make better decisions about how to invest their limited resources. The committee deeply desired to leave a legacy to the people of this province. The Centre took up the challenge with some trepidation. In the preceding ten years we had written and published many practical resources for communities across North America, but FRBC's vision was a very tall order. Our thanks go to the FRBC Committee Chair, Garry Merkel, for maintaining the vision, our concerns notwithstanding. His persistence has borne fruit. The Centre structured its relationship with FRBC as a partnership. A steering group from across the province was struck to act as a sounding board. In addition to Garry, this group included Peter Boothroyd, Ray Travers, Doug Weir, Chris Robertson, and Ken MacLeod, as well as FRBC staff members Kelly Nontell and Molly Harrington,. They proved tireless in their feedback and patience. The Project has also been fortunate to have many collaborators in government, but special thanks go to Brandon Hughes and Nathanael Olsen of the Federal Rural Secretariat for their active and creative support. In November 1999, after 15 months of work, we released for discussion the first draft of The Community Resilience Manual in portable document format. The response affirmed that our efforts were not misplaced. Over 500 communities, government agencies, researchers, and CED practitioners downloaded the draft in the subsequent 12 months. Although the centrepiece of that publication was the community resilience process, people expressed enthusiasm for the draft's third section, the Catalogue, because of its encyclopaedic approach to community tools, techniques, and models. The Catalogue therefore began to take on a life of its own. In the past year, additional research doubled the number of entries to over 60. We decided to designate it as a separate publication, Tools & Techniques for Community Recovery & Renewal - a companion to the Manual, but useful in its own right. We owe great thanks to Stewart E. Perry, Tools & Techniques' editor and chief contributor, as well as to many other people who assisted: Michelle Colussi, Flo Frank, Keith Jacobsen, Mike Lewis, Sandy Lockhart, James MacGregor, Don McNair, Ron Paynter, Brigitta Perry, Pippa Rowcliffe, Ivan Thompson, and Gary Wilson. We also express deep appreciation to FRBC, to the provincial Ministry of Community Development, Co-operatives, and Volunteers, and to the Rural Secretariat for funding this resource. This is a work in progress. The Centre is committed to revise, expand, and update Tools & Techniques in the years to come so that it keeps pace with the highly innovative field of community economic development. We therefore encourage readers to use the Community Resilience pages at our website, www.cedworks, to send us suggestions and recommendations, not only for additional entries but also for resources and publications. The Centre has earmarked some of its own resources for this work, and is seeking funding for new entries. Many, many people have contributed to the learning represented here. Many, many more will contribute in the years ahead. We invite you to consider this a collective resource which we all keep building, and from which we all keep learning. Introduction This publication is the initial version of, in effect, an encyclopedia - an encyclopedia of certain practical activities that communities have used to handle the socio‑economic changes (such as plant closings or major out-migration) which could severely threaten them. As the title indicates, we have called these activities simply community economic development tools and techniques. The selection found in this edition represents some of the best practices used in the Canadian context, although most of them are also to be found in the U.S. The intent of these compiled entries is to provide a ready resource for community organizations that seek to build community resilience and stability in the face of current or expected economic and social change. Due to constraints of time and effort, there are significant omissions, among them tools and techniques in the fields of housing and in human services. With the assistance of readers and other supporters, future editions shall correct those omissions. We hope all sorts of community‑based organizations (such as Community Development Corporations, Chambers of Commerce, and even municipal government agencies) can make use of Tools & Techniques for Community Recovery & Renewal. There is a slight emphasis in this edition on what would be most useful for smaller cities, towns, and rural regions, and discussion is often geared to that context. In addition, for concrete applications, we have concentrated on cases and opportunities in British Columbia. However, the tools described here have also been used and some even invented in larger or urban settings throughout North America, and many case illustrations come from other provinces and throughout the U.S. Historically, the usual efforts to strengthen the local economy of a community have relied on a single approach – such as industrial recruitment, buy‑local campaigns, or mainstreet improvement. These approaches have had their champions and successes. Sometimes these approaches have been combined and have included more than one community‑building project. But, generally speaking, in the past these efforts have not been integrated as a systematic strategy to strengthen the over‑all resilience of a community to handle economic and social change. There is nothing wrong with communities choosing to carry out a single project or a series of projects for local improvement (say, upgrading the local fair grounds, or training local tour guides to improve tourism appeal, or holding monthly business clinics). Most such projects are good in themselves, but what we are assuming here is that communities can take a very different and more powerful sort of approach, trying something bigger: namely, community economic development (CED). CED is not a matter of focussing on one or another community‑building project, or on a limited strategy like industrial recruitment. It is a comprehensive system for development that is intended for on‑going implementation over at least a decade or two, usually much more. Thus the individual tools are described here under the assumption that they are to be used in a wide‑ranging CED strategy, not as isolated projects. This strategy is intended to empower the community to handle its own destiny; it is not focussed on growth as such, but on capacity to handle economic and social change for local benefit. CED in its most effective format embodies the following features:
Considering that over-all perspective, the reader of this compendium will also recognize that the individual tools described here are just single pieces to be integrated in a process or system. Thus they will be most successful in the context of a systematic CED approach. That certainly does not mean that every tool described here must be used in order to create a system for development. Only those tools that make sense within the context of the particular community and its resources and limitations ought to be used. However, the community leadership must carefully consider how to maintain a long-term, on-going process of development, and this on-going process will require, at a minimum, a special organization for guiding the CED strategy. Organizations that take such a systematic development approach will be referred to throughout as CEDOs: community economic development organizations. A CEDO provides the locus for evolving and managing the CED strategy. One entry focusses specifically on creating such an organization. Several other items deal with the preliminaries to founding or re-shaping this lead group, activities such as a community-wide visioning process. An extended illustration of a successful CED effort in Revelstoke, B.C., using a variety of tools in the rural region/small town context is provided in Appendix A. The CEDO described there is by no means intended as a model; it is in fact a rather rare combination of several inter-linked organizations. But the case can serve as an introduction to a real development system and how a CEDO manages it. Other communities will not take the same general route; each must find its own pathway. The story of Revelstoke is however, a concrete example of how CED can work, and to read it is to see a whole array of tools put to use.
The full report is available in PDF format or by contacting:
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