A co-operative for rural development has been awarded $250,000 Canadian dollars by the Québec provincial government. It was the Sociocratic Circle-organization Method (SCM) that made the application successful – two earlier proposals that didn’t include SCM were rejected.

Twice the government judged the proposal by the Co-operative for Rural Development (CSUR), based in the Canadian village Très-Saint-Rédempteur, “interesting.” But twice, the government also judged that the proposal lacked an instrument to manage the CSUR’s projects for revitalizing their community. “With SCM, we could finally add a concrete instrument to involve the people in the community,” says Benoît Guichard, CEO of the co-operative. “Now, we can be sure that we’re not just trying to ram through the plans of participants in the co-op, but that we represent the entire village, making every citizen a part of the solution. SCM makes the process of revitalizing the village transparent and measurable.” Sociogest, the Quebec-based consultancy firm that implements SCM in French-speaking countries, helped to incorporate SCM in the proposal.

“Participative democracy”
Thus, SCM will be used to explore the notions of “participative democracy” among the 750 inhabitants of Très-Saint-Rédempteur. The grant designated the town as a “rural laboratory.” The co-op has worked out a list of economic, social and cultural projects. Guichard: “They include the transformation of the church into a cultural center, the building of an eco-energetic residential area, the reopening of a convenience store specializing in biological and local products, and extracting energy for heating from methane recovered from septic tanks.”

At the moment, Guichard and his team are developing ways to introduce SCM to the villagers. They will hire a project manager for the four-year project.

Proud of the village
The effectiveness of SCM and the revitalization process will be measured by, among other indicators, the number of inhabitants participating in the different projects. “We would like as many people as possible to join in,” comments Guichard, “so that people will feel a certain pride for their village.” The past few years, the sense of “togetherness” had reappeared with the community projects leaded by the co-op. The “locals” are largely outnumbered these days by the “neo-rurals” (the population increased 22% in the last five years). The new people have come to live in Très-Saint-Rédempteur because it is located only fifty minutes from Montréal. Many are independent workers with an office at home plugged to the village’s innovative high speed internet. With these new residents come different needs, and that’s why the co-op was originally founded. It’s a citizen creation for a conscious and responsible development of the community.

Cooperation with municipality
The CSUR (Co-opérative de Solidarité du Suroît, co-op of Solidarity of the Suroît Region) was founded in 2006 in order to bring high speed internet to the village at an affordable price because conventional providers charged a lot of money or offered no internet access in the hilly and bushy areas where few people live. This project succeeded, and by this spring had 300 hundred residences plugged in. The co-op also provides internet to other communities in the vicinity and now has the go-ahead to plug in the entire region.
Since its foundation, CSUR has developed into an executive partner for the city council, with which it closely collaborates, and has gained a strong visibility in the province as a community builder, attracting partners such as universities and governmental institutions.