#MontrealMondays – A blog series about the inspiring Neighbourhood and Community work being done in Montréal.
With Deepening Communities’ Neighborhoods – The Heart of Community Mobilizing (HCMI) for Impact being right around the corner, we are featuring a four-week blog series about the incredible organizations that reside in Montréal. There will be one #MontréalMondays blog post every Monday leading up to the HCMI event on June 6th.
The Centre for Community Organizations (COCo)
Welcome back to the third installment of the #MontréalMondays blog series!
The organization we are featuring this week is The Centre for Community Organizations (or Centre des Organismes Communautaires [COCo] in French). COCo is a charitable organization offering support to small, grassroots organizations with social justice mandates. COCo’s believes that supporting the organizational health of these organizations -- in particular, groups that are led by beneficiaries (“by and for”), groups that are coming out of racialized or immigrant communities, and groups that are bilingual or English-speaking, as a few examples-- leads us towards a more just world overall. Although COCo’s work is primarily based in Montreal, they also do work with organizations in the regions across Quebec.
In addition to COCo’s support of grassroots organizations, COCo has also committed over the next five years to focus on strengthening inclusion and diversity within the Quebec community sector by stewarding dialogue and learning on these issues. One of the first projects as part of this initiative is Diversité d’Abord, a research project on racism within nonprofit organizations in Quebec.
COCo brings some unique approaches to their work. As Kira Page, Communications Coordinator at COCo, says: “one thing that stands out about our work in the sector that is we do built-to-measure trainings for every group we work for-- developing a support plan for each group that is based on their specific context. I think we also make sure that our work is always fun, participatory. We don’t think of ourselves as experts, but as people who can help each organization find the right solutions for them”. COCo also uses a “flat” or nonhierarchical structure, and has helped many other organizations investigate and adopt more collaborative governance models.
Make sure to visit us next Monday when we feature another great Montréal organization or initiative that is creating change at the neighbourhood level!
Want to learn more about COCo? You can find their Facebook page here, sign up for their monthly newsletter here, or check out this video about the organization.
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Neighbourhoods ♥ The Heart of Community: Mobilizing for Impact (June 6-8, 2017) is a unique and bilingual national learning event that brings together the most innovative and inspiring examples of neighbourhood action at its best. Learn more
Joignez-vous aux bâtisseurs de communauté, aux leaders citoyens, aux chercheurs, aux leaders municipaux, et autres gens passionnés et venez raviver et rajeunir votre espoir dans le pouvoir citoyen et l’engagement de toute une communauté. Inscrivez-vous à l’événement annuel. Les Quartiers ♥ Le Cœur de la Communauté: Se Mobiliser pourl’Impact qui se tient à Montréal du 6 au 8 juin 2017. http://events.tamarackcommunity.ca/fr/quartiers
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Further Reading:
- Read the second segment of #MontrealMondays
- Read: Creating a More Inclusive and Positive Online Community by Connor Judge
- Read the May edition of Engage!
