During Spring 2020, the COVID-19 pandemics hits the world. The Affluent solidarity co-op, located in Petite-Rivière-Saint-François village in the Charlevoix region, must stop its activities. This co-op, created in 2016, includes a camping site, a youth hostel, a coffee shop and ecotourism activities. The co-founders of the Affluent, Guillaume Néron and Léa Landry-Massicotte, decide to use this break as an opportunity to plan a collective process aiming to foster social ties in the community and support the emergence of citizens’ initiatives to reinforce local resilience. They contact the professor Jonathan Durand Folco and William Beauchemin (social innovation lab manager at Exeko) to help them to design the collective process and launch an action research around the Resilience project.
Objectives:
- Collectivize community resources and knowledge through inclusive and participatory processes;
- Foster collective reflection around social needs in order to find concrete solutions;
- Co-create to imagine activities and infrastructures to improve the local community;
- Launch social innovation projects and experimentations;
- Empower the community capacities to take its future in its own hands through structural projects.
Research activities:
- Exploratory meetings: April and May 2020
- Mapping of social actors in the community: June 2nd 2020
- Ideation activities and exploratoty meetings with local citizens: June 25-27 2020
- Writing a research note on the social and territorial issues of the community: September to December 2020
- Accompaniment process of the Affluent co-op to design the Resilience project: Winter and Spring 2021